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FORWARD MARCH 



CHIN HSING 

(FORWARD MARCH) 

IN 

CHINA 



BY 

EDITH HART 

AND 

LUCY C. STURGIS 



THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN 
MISSIONARY SOCIETY 

281 Fourth Avenue 
NEW YORK 



.H 3 



MAR II 1914 



©CI.A3 6 28 5 5 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 
A Choice op Evils 1-13 

CHAPTER II 
The Borrowed Coffin 14-25 

CHAPTER III 
A Great Inheritance 26-42 

CHAPTER IV 
The New Ideal 43-56 

CHAPTER V 
Must One Be a Christian? 57-75 

CHAPTER VI 
An Invitation . 76-88 

A PRAYER FOR CHINA 89 

APPENDIX 90-98 




2— YELLOW 



4— WHITE 




* K 4L T - ft 



"All under heaven are one family." — Chinese Proverb. 
"He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell 
on all the face of the earth." —Acts XVII : 26. 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

CHAPTER I 

A CHOICE OF EVILS 

There was no doubt about it, the T'ien family- 
was unlucky. No one knew just why, but every one 
knew it was true. If you don't believe it, just listen 
to what some of the neighbors said: 

"So the T'ien grandfather has passed away, too, 
and no coffin in the house," said Mrs. Chiang to 
some of her bosom friends as they were met together. 
to celebrate the betrothal of her three-year-old 
daughter. "What improvident people !" 

"How did it happen?" inquired Mrs. Tsang, who 
had but recently moved into the neighborhood and 
who did not know all of the news. "Why, we have 
never been without a coffin in our house for at least 
seven generations. One never knows when the spirit- 
may be called away, and it is always so expensive 
to buy a coffin when one really needs it." 

"If you ask me, I think the whole trouble is that 
they neglected the kitchen god," replied Mrs. Wang. 

A thrill of horror ran through the crowd. "Neglect 
the kitchen god! How rash! How dare they do it? 
Why, I thought they were very devout," said Mrs. 
Chiang. "Don't you remember the year they sold 

1 



2 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

all their pigs so Mr. Tien could make the pilgrimage 
to the Sacred Mountain? And every new moon Mrs. 
Tien burns incense at the temple." 

"That's it, exactly. They worshipped the gods in 
the temple and neglected the ones in their own house. 
Now it stands to reason that no one family can wor- 
ship all of the gods, but I always say that 'water at 
a distance will not quench a fire near at hand/ so if 
we neglect anybody, it's never the kitchen god. I 
don't know what the rest of you think, but I firmly 
believe that money spent on him is never wasted. 
Now I always make his dessert so sweet and thick 
that our kitchen god cannot open his mouth for 
at least three days after he has eaten it. By that 
time he has forgotten any bad things that we may 
have done, and so our family is safe for another year. 
But I saw what Mrs. Tien had prepared for him last 
year, and it was as thin as water. I should think 
that no self-respecting god would even taste it." 

"That does sound bad. But whatever the cause, 
they certainly have had bad luck. First one death 
and then another; crops failed, the house burned; 
Mr. Tien himself is ill, and now the old grandfather 
is gone and no coffin in the house. What do they 
plan to do about it?" 

"Only one thing they can do; that is, sell Yin-ti 
for a slave and buy a coffin." 

"That is a great pity. She is a bright girl and 
would make somebody a good daughter-in-law." 

"Yes, it is too bad; but what can a girl expect 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 3 

who has arrived at the age of twelve without being 
provided with a mother-in-law? You know the verse 

"We keep a dog to watch the house, 

A pig is useful, too; 
We keep a cat to catch a mouse, 

But what can we do with a girl like you?" 

"I wonder that she wasn't provided with a mother- 
in-law long ago." 

"Just another instance of their improvidence. Mrs. 
Tien refused the offer of Mr. Li for his third son 
because the family was not good enough for her; and 
for Mr. Wan's fifth son because the boy was too 
stupid. As though that mattered, when Mrs. Wan 
would have been such a good mother-in-law. That 
was in their prosperous days. Now what woman 
would be willing to take a daughter-in-law from a 
family that has had so much bad luck?" 

While this talking was going on, Yin-ti herself and 
her ten-year-old brother, Ch'uen-hsi, had entered the 
room and had heard the last remarks. 

The name Yin-ti means "to lead a little brother," 
and is a name often given to the first girl born into 
a Chinese family, in the hope that she may be the 
means of drawing the spirit of a little boy into the 
household. It was literally true in her case that she 
did "lead a little brother," for she and Ch'uen-hsi 
were inseparable. His name means "Spring Joy," 
and was given him because he was born in the spring- 
time. 



4 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

It was small wonder that Yin-ti was troubled as 
she heard this conversation, for it was bad enough 
to think that no one would want her as a daughter- 
in-law, without the added fear of being sold as a 
slave. She knew too well the fate of a Chinese slave 
girl. At best, she must grow up ignorant and uncared 
for — the household drudge — and at worst? But it is 
not well to linger over all the disagreeable things 
that might come to her at the worst. "Spring Joy," 
too, looked anything but joyful as he heard these 
words, but he brightened up a little as one of the 
women went on to say: 

"If it were not so far away, I believe the foreigners 
at the hospital in Wuchang might be willing to lend 
them a coffin until they could afford to buy one. They 
always have some on hand, and I have heard of their 
doing such things before." 

"I would be afraid to go to a foreign hospital," 
spoke up another. "Foreigners are so queer, and one 
never knows what they may do. My oldest brother's 
wife's third sister went there once for a week, and 
she was never so glad to get away from a place in 
her life." 

"I have heard they like to take children's hearts 
and eyes and make them into medicine to send to 
America, but I thought grown people were safe. 
Were they unkind to her or only rude? Everybody 
says that foreigners' manners are very small." 

"Oh, they were kind enough, and even polite, after 
a fashion; and she doesn't think there is any truth 
in those stories about cutting up the children. But 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 5 

they do not let you eat what you want, and as for 
baths, they are taking them all the time. The 
chances are ten to one that if Ch'uen-hsi asked to 
borrow a coffin the doctor would not lend it unless 
he first promised to take a bath." 

"Oh, I would risk it," spoke up Ch'uen-hsi. "The 
winter is coming on now, and surely even foreigners 
would not ask me to take a bath in such cold 
weather. Besides, even if they do, I would rather 
take a bath in cold water than have my sister sold 
to be a slave. And if they will only lend me a coffin 
until I can grow up, I will work and pay for it." 

"Those are good words and your courage seems to 
be great; but how will you get to Wuchang? It is 
many miles away and you are only a little boy." 

"But I am not afraid," he replied boldly. "No 
matter what it is, I am not afraid. As soon as I 
reach the Han river, I will be all right, for the Tsang 
family's oldest son goes to Hankow once a week now 
with a raft of bamboo poles, and I am sure he will 
let me go on his boat." 

It was a daring idea, for truly the way was long, 
the foreign people might or might not be friendly, 
and fortune seemed just now to be against whatever 
any member of the T'ien family tried to do. Even 
if Ch'uen-hsi dared to risk such a journey, would his 
parents let him go? This was the question which 
filled the minds of the children as they hurried home 
to tell of the plan and find out if it were really true 
that Yin-ti was about to be sold as a slave. 

True enough, alas, for the floods of the previous 



6 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

spring had destroyed not only their own rice, but 
that of their neighbors also, and there were none of 
their friends who were able to help them in their 
need. The father was laid by with a slow fever, 
which made it seem quite possible that the missing 
coffin might be needed for two funerals instead of 
one, and the only way to avoid utter disgrace ap- 
peared to be to sacrifice Yin-ti for the sake of the 
family. Bravely Ch'uen-hsi explained his plan. 
What would they think of it? For a moment there 
was silence, while Yin-ti held her breath, and Mother 
T'ien looked up with a new hope in her eyes. Then 
Grandfather Wang spoke slowly but very positively: 

"It might be possible if you were not the only son 
of your father, the only hope of this house. It is a 
risky thing which you propose to do, and if anything 
were to happen to you, who would carry on the fam- 
ily line and attend to the worship of your ancestors? 
If your father were to die there would be no one but 
you to arrange for the comfort of his spirit and to 
satisfy his desires, and those of your other ancestors, 
by gifts and worship at their tablets and their graves. 
It would be unfilial to take such a risk." 

"True," said Grandmother T'ien, "and there would 
also be the danger of angering the gods yet more 
against this unlucky family. Even if it should be 
true that the cruelty of these foreign people is exag- 
gerated — even if they should lend you a coffin and 
let you go from them in safety, it is well known that 
they have no respect for the gods in whose power we 
are — that they dig holes in the earth and build 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 7 

towers into the air with no regard for the spirits who 
are troubled by these things, and that they worship 
a strange god who teaches them to look always into 
the future and to forget the past. Surely no good 
could possibly come from any attempt to care for 
our dead by the help of such people as this." 

Down, down went the heart of poor Yin-ti, but it 
rose again as her mother exclaimed: 

"There is a risk, surely a great risk, but is it not 
better to take this one chance rather than to let our 
Yin-ti go to a life of certain suffering and shame?" 

"You should have thought for Yin-ti before," said 
the grandmother; "then perhaps all this trouble 
would not have come upon us. She would certainly 
have been better off in the family of Mr. Li or Mr. 
Wan as a daughter-in-law than sold as a slave to no 
one knows whom." 

"Who can say?" answered Mother Tien, "Mr. Li 
fled from his life when he had only been married one 
month, and they say that his widow leads the life of 
a slave now in the home of her mother-in-law; while 
as for the fate of Wei Tao, there was undoubtedly a 
curse upon her in the Wan family, and it might be 
that it would have fallen upon our Yin-ti." 

She shuddered, and so did the others, for the fate 
of Wei Tao was indeed a terrible one. Betrothed 
when she was ten years old, to the fifth son of the 
family of Wan, she had entered the home of his 
parents and almost immediately fallen ill of a fever. 
She recovered, but her strength was gone. She could 
no longer do the work she was given to do; she was 



8 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

possessed with a dreadful sleepiness; and, to the 
horror of those who watched her, they saw her long 
black hair gradually fall from her head, leaving her 
ugly and useless. Worse still, the evil spirit which 
had descended upon her also laid hold on two other 
members of the household, and it became evident 
that if something were not done she would bring 
disaster upon the whole family. It was then that 
Wan-tsin, her future husband, absolutely refused to 
have anything more to do with her, and she was 
turned out of the house in dishonor. She had gone 
back to her parents, only to be turned away again, 
for who would dare harbor one so cursed, and then 
she had disappeared utterly and was supposed to 
have died, for her spirit had visited the homes of 
many neighbors and, wherever it went, the horror of 
that hairless fever followed. 

Surely slavery itself could be no worse than this, 
and yet, as Yin-ti and her family thought of it, they 
became more and more puzzled. Girls are not usually 
held in very high esteem in China, but in this family 
Yin-ti had been favored more than most — "spoiled," 
so the neighbors said. Father T'ien had always had 
a particular fondness for her, and had even taken the 
trouble, in his prosperous days, to teach her things 
girls were not supposed to need to know— to read 
and write some of the Chinese characters and to 
count with figures. They put off the arrangements 
for the sale as long as they dared, hoping that some 
other way of getting a coffin could be found than 
this plan of Ch'uen-hsi's, but nothing came of it, and 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 9 

* 

at last in despair Mother Tien decided to consult her 
sick husband and act on the chance of his word. 

Poor Father Tien had lain for days in a sort of 
half consciousness, and it was quite doubtful if he 
could be made to understand the question concerning 
which his answer would mean so much. Very care- 
fully the mother explained the case to him, ending 
with the question: 

"Shall Ch'uen-hsi go out on this dangerous jour- 
ney, or shall Yin-ti be sold as a slave?" 

For a time he lay gazing into space, apparently 
not understanding the question that had been asked. 
Then, all at once, the meaning of her words seemed 
to dawn upon him, and, raising himself on his couch, 
he cried out excitedly: 

"Sold as a slave? My little Yin-ti a slave? Any- 
thing but that. Let Ch'uen-hsi go on ten thousand 
pilgrimages first; the gods will protect him." 

Again he sank into a stupor, and Mother Tien 
hurried back to the grandparents to tell what he had 
said. Then began another discussion. 

"Father Tien has spoken wisdom," they said. 
"Truly let the boy go on a pilgrimage, no matter how 
far. Let him take offerings to the temple on the 
Sacred Mountain. Let him leave gifts before the 
image of the harvest god, and burn much paper 
money at the graves of his honorable ancestors. So, 
it might be, good fortune would return to the family 
and no harm come to Ch'uen-hsi." 

"These things might all be good," answered Mother 
Tien doubtfully, "but how about the necessary cof- 



10 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

fin? Ch'uen-hsi could hardly bring such a thing as 
that home with him from the Sacred Mountain. 
Would it do to attend so far as was possible to all 
the other parts of the pilgrimage, and then let 
Ch'uen-hsi go to Wuchang? If he were very careful 
and devout, might not the gods be deceived into 
thinking he was going to worship in the temple there, 
and would not the spirits of his ancestors understand 
that this journey was being taken in order to save 
the family honor and help him on his way?" 

At last it was decided that after two days of an- 
cestor worship and the offering of many gifts in the 
temple, the boy should go; but where was the money 
to come from for these things and for the embalming 
of Grandfather Tien's body? The family posses- 
sions that could still be sold would bring in only a 
small part of what would be needed if the favor of 
jealous spirits and angry gods was to be gained by 
generous offerings. Ch'uen-hsi went out on to the 
doorstep and thought it all over, and a great idea 
popped into his head. 

Not very far down the street on which the T'ien 
family lived was a little workshop which belonged 
to a potter named Wing. Now Wing was not only 
a potter, he was several other things at the same 
time. To begin with, he was a hump-back, scorned 
by half the people among whom he lived because he 
could not work like other men, and feared by the 
other half because of the evil spirit which they be- 
lieved lived in his hump and enabled him to do all 
sorts of queer things. In the next place he was a 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 11 

juggler; he could take things out of the empty jars 
on the shop shelves, balls and tops if he liked his 
visitor, and most evil smelling fire-crackers if he 
wanted to get rid of the one who came to taunt him 
because of his crooked back. Finally he was a 
maker of fire-works, and in the little hut behind his 
shop he spent long hours putting together fearsome 
combinations of noisy ponder and shining lights 
with which it was his great joy to fascinate and ter- 
rify the neighborhood on dark nights. Most of the 
children were deadly afraid of him, but it happened 
that he had often bribed Ch'uen-hsi to carry clay and 
pails of water to his shop by giving him little chunks 
of damp pottery to play with. Gradually a sort of 
friendship had grown up between them, for Ch'uen- 
hsi never laughed at the old man's awkward move- 
ments, and had once taken his part against some 
boys who were pelting him with jeers and mud on 
the street. 

It was to Wing that Ch'uen-hsi went now, and it 
didn't take long to tell the story of Yin-ti's possible 
fate, and to make the proposal he had come to make, 
namely, that he, Ch'uen-hsi, would do errands for 
Wing for half a year after he came back from his 
journey if Wing would lend him the money to go 
away with. To the old hump-back this seemed like 
a pretty good bargain, provided Ch'uen-hsi came 
safely home, for it had been hard to find anyone 
willing to work for so unpopular a neighbor as he 
was, and the way to the clay pits and the canal 
seemed to be growing longer every day as he grew 



12 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

stiff er in his joints. In the end the bargain was con- 
cluded, and Ch'uen-hsi went away with the money 
in one pocket and in the other some mysterious look- 
ing little balls with string sticking out of them. 
These Wing had given him with the promise that if 
he should find himself in danger on his journey, and 
should drop one of them on a stone, it would protect 
him. 

There followed for our valiant Ch'uen-hsi two days 
of most careful preparation, not at all the sort of 
preparation an American boy would make for a jour- 
ney, but just as important in the eyes of his family. 
First, he must get up each morning in time to be at 
the great Temple, a mile away, when the sun rose. 
Here he must burn incense and pay the Buddhist 
priest to offer prayers to the gods. Then he must 
hurry back in order to bow many times before the 
ancestral tablets in his home, and to place before 
them the offerings of food and wine which his mother 
had prepared in the belief that, properly presented 
by Ch'uen-hsi, they would turn into spiritual food 
and wine to satisfy the spirits dwelling there. Later 
in the day he must go out of the town to the graves 
of these same ancestors to worship there. Very care- 
fully he must sweep and clean the graves, spreading 
flowers upon them. Then he must make little piles 
of paper money and paper clothes and set fire to 
them on the graves, so that his ancestors might have 
these things to spend and to wear in the spirit world. 
One other thing he must do — he must provide appro- 
priate gifts to take with him and present to those 




CH'UIN-HSI— WITH GIFTS FOR "THE AWE INSPIRING FOREIGNERS" 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 13 

doubtful foreign people at the hospital, for who in 
China would dare make a request without bringing 
an offering? 

All these things being attended to, he was ready 
to start, and early in the morning on the third day, 
with the few remaining bits of money in one pocket 
and Wing's odd little balls in the other, with the 
thought of the family honor and of the spirits of his 
ancestors to give him courage, and with his gifts for 
the foreigners under his arms, he set out upon the 
thirty li (ten miles) of road that stretched between 
him and the Han river. Here is his picture. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BORROWED COFFIN 

We left Ch'uen-hsi trudging along on the road to 
the Han river. So full was his head of all the pos- 
sible adventures that lay before him that he gave 
little thought to the sights along the way. Yet there 
were many things that would have interested us if 
we had been there — the water buffaloes ploughing in 
the fields, the rice paddies, the coolies with their 
burdens, and occasionally a family with all their 
worldly possessions gracefully balanced on a wheel- 
barrow. Once a travelling salesman stopped him 
and tried to buy his two fat chickens, and once he 
hurried on faster than ever, for he passed a little 
company of slave girls on their way to the silk mills 
in the city and remembered Yin-ti and the fate he 
was trying to save her from. Several times he grew 
hungry on his journey, and stopped to get a bowl of 
steaming rice at one of the wayside inns. It was a 
hot day and the steam and dust rose up from the 
road and covered him as he went, so that when he 
reached the river, late in the afternoon, he was very 
glad to find that the boat was already loaded with 
bamboo poles and would soon be ready to start out 
for Wuchang. We would have thought it a very 
small boat on which to make a long river journey, 

14 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 15 

and we would have wondered, when we saw the tiny 
cabin, where there would be room enough for a bed, 
and what we could find to sleep under. Not so 
Ch'uen-hsi. His puffy, padded clothes served him 
quite as well for bedding as for clothes; and as the 
boatman had five children of his own, all sleeping in 
that tiny room, it needed only one little board pillow 
more to make room for Ch'uen-hsi among them. He 
slept soundly, and when he waked next morning the 
boat had already "opened its head" and they were 
well on their way. 

Now indeed Ch'uen-hsi felt that his adventures 
had begun. Never in all his life had he imagined 
that there were so many boats in the world. There 
were junks and barges and house-boats, big boats 
and little boats, ugly and old and gay boats, and 
every one of them had something tied to its mast to 
show what sort of a load it was carrying up to the 
great cities on the Yang-tse river. There were for- 
eign boats among them, and Ch'uen-hsi looked 
closely at these as they sailed by, hoping to get some 
idea of what these people out of strange lands looked 
like, and how they would be likely to treat him at 
the end of his journey. The Tsang boatman reas- 
sured him somewhat by saying that he had had deal- 
ings with foreign men from time to time in Hankow, 
and had found them fair and friendly. "They are 
queer, of course," he said, "their eyes are wrongly 
placed in their faces, and are the wrong color, their 
hair is all sorts of colors, and they always cut it 
short off so as not to show any more of it than they 



16 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

can help. They wear ugly clothes of dull colors and 
heavy materials, and are forever washing themselves 
to try and get cool. They say the women are even 
queerer than the men, but I have never had anything 
to do with them." 

All through that long morning Ch'uen-hsi watched 
and wondered, and his heart went up with courage 
when he thought of Yin-ti, and down with fear when 
he thought of all the unknown things that lay before 
him; and what with the ups and down of it, it was 
beating pretty fast when at last the boat drew up 
against the dock in Hankow, and the second part of 
his journey was over. 

But his troubles were far from over, for now he 
must cross the great Yang-tse river in a small boat, 
and make his way through the city of Wuchang to 
the hospital of the foreigners. The river is wide 
between the two cities, and the wind and the waves 
were high, but there before him were the walls of 
Wuchang, and behind them somewhere was that coffin 
which he must borrow in order to save Yin-ti. 

Once landed, the world seemed full of new perils 
to a small boy who didn't know his way. Up to the 
city gates and through them he went in the middle of 
such a stream of people as Ch'uen-hsi had never seen 
before. At first he thought it must be a procession, 
but every one seemed to be going a different way, once 
they got inside the gates, and he concluded that this 
must be the ordinary thing after all, only that cities 
were very confusing places. 

"Please, old man, born before me, what is the way 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 17 

to the Benevolent hospital?" . This was his polite 
way of asking for direction. He asked it many times 
before he got there, for there were many streets to go 
through, and all were narrow and winding, and sev- 
eral times he had to dodge suddenly around a corner 
to get out of the path of a ricksha as the cry went up, 
"Open the road, a great man is coming." 

On one of these occasions he had a curious adven- 
ture which set him thinking. A sedan chair was 
close upon him and he had just time to slip into a 
dark little doorway where two men were talking. 
Ch'uen-hsi couldn't see their faces, but he heard one 
of them say: 

"Surely the god of luck is with you, Ch'i-Wei, for 
here is a boy who would do very well, take him." 

Immediately a hand which felt by no means 
friendly fell upon his shoulder, and a gruff voice 
answered: 

"Luck indeed, and he brings me two fat cocks 
also." 

Ch'uen-hsi was not exactly frightened, for these 
were not foreigners anyway, but he knew that they 
meant him no good, and that it behooved him to 
get out of that doorway as quickly as possible. Con- 
sequently he ducked and twisted out of the stranger's 
grasp, at the same time reaching down into his 
pocket for one of old Wing's balls. Unfortunately, 
he dropped one of the chickens, and a jolly scuffle 
followed as he and the men went hunting, he for the 
chicken and the men for him. In the end he had 
to go without his chicken, and would have been 



18 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

caught himself but for the horrible noise and fumes 
which filled that doorway as he suddenly threw 
Wing's ball upon the ground. Not expecting it, the 
two men were bewildered for a moment while Ch'uen- 
hsi quickly slid back into the street and away. 

What did they want him for? This puzzled him 
as he went on his way, and also he was troubled by 
the loss of his chicken. He must be extra careful 
of the last one, for it would never do to arrive at the 
hospital without any offering to present to the for- 
eigners. 

Just as he was thinking this and trying to decide 
what he should say when he got there, a most unex- 
pected thing happened: Around a corner there sud- 
denly ran an enormous black dog followed by a little 
girl. Ch'uen-hsi jumped quickly to one side and let 
the dog go by, but in so doing he got right in the way 
of the girl. There was a grand collision. Over they 
both went, and Ch'uen-hsi's head landed much harder 
than was comfortable against the curb. He sat up 
and saw a number of things in the wrong place. 
First, a lot of stars dancing in front of his eyes 
instead of in the sky. Next, his last chicken in the 
mouth of the dog, and quite limp. And finally, the 
little girl, whose acquaintance he had met in such an 
unwelcome way, sitting weeping in the road. 

Because of his great fondness for Yin-ti, Ch'uen- 
hsi was kinder to girls than Chinese boys are apt to 
be, and he immediately tried to comfort this one. 

"Why do you cry, are you hurt?" 

"No, not hurt, but my future mother-in-law set 
me to shell the beans and told me on no account to 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 19 

go out. Then came by Ch'ih-tsz', in whom lives the 
soul of my little brother, and I followed him, and 
when I go back I shall be beaten." 

"That is too bad, but surely Ch'ih-tsz' could not 
have been your brother, for he has run away again, 
and has taken my chicken with him." 

"Yes, that is just how we know that he carries the 
soul of my brother, for he was a bad boy and always 
getting people into trouble. Now he has taken your 
chicken, and doubtless you will be beaten, too, be- 
cause you have lost it." 

Then Ch'uen-hsi's face grew very grave, and he 
told her what he had meant to do with the chicken, 
and why he had come to Wuchang. 

"Why," she said, "if that is what you brought it 
for, you might have saved yourself the trouble. 
Those people at the Benevolent Hospital are kind, 
and do not want your gifts. I have been there, and 
I know. My own mother was there when I was very 
little. They made her welcome though she had no 
gifts to present to them, and they cured her from a 
very dreadful devil-sickness, which the Chinese 
priest could do nothing about. I will show you the 
way there, and you need have no fear of them." 

Here was certainly a bit of good fortune just when 
our hero had thought himself most unlucky, and 
when, after a short walk, his little guide left him 
before a door over which was inscribed 



20 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

and he knew that his journey was at an end; he 
knocked bravely, even though he knew he must soon 
encounter those queer blue-eyed men and queerer 
women without any offering to present. 

A white-capped nurse opened the door, and to her 
he promptly poured out the words he had decided to 
say: 

"I have come, oh honorable sitter in a chariot, to 
beseech a loan of one of your honorable coffins. My 
grandfather has died. My father is ill. We have 
no money to buy a coffin, and the neighbors all say 
that if you do not have pity upon us, my sister must 
be sold as a slave. If you will only grant my re- 
quest, I will do anything you wish, and as soon as 
my father can earn enough money, he will buy an- 
other coffin and return this to you, or will pay you 
for this one." 

It was a strange request, even in this land of 
strange things. It must not be too lightly granted, 
but when, after question upon question, and answer 
upon answer, the nurse understood all that was in- 
volved, she felt that she could not have refused, even 
if it had been the last coffin in the house. 

It was some days before arrangements could be 
made for Ch'uen-hsi's return journey with the cov- 
eted coffin, but having struck up a friendship with 
Wu Sz-fu, one of the hospital servants, he made good 
use of his time. Wu Sz-fu had been in the employ 
of the hospital for some time, and was sure he knew 
all there was to be known about foreigners in general 
and missions in particular. The information he gave 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 21 

Ch'uen-hsi was always interesting, if not strictly ac- 
curate, and he took him to many places which made 
the eyes of the country boy bulge with wonder. Best 
of all, he made Ch'uen-hsi feel very eager to come 
back to Wuchang some day to study in the wonder- 
ful boy's school where these foreign people were busy 
teaching new and useful things. 

The journey home was quite uneventful, and 
seemed very short as compared with the one down 
the Han River. The successful traveler was fairly 
bursting with pride and information as the neighbors 
came flocking to hear about his adventures. The 
coffin spoke for itself. It was proof positive that the 
foreigners must have some good traits and recognize 
the necessity of doing good deeds now and then. 
They listened with eagerness as Ch'uen-hsi told 
them all he had seen and heard. The hospital came 
in for his first attention. 

"It is just a native house/' he said, "and when I 
looked at the outside I thought it must be a mistake 
that foreigners lived there. When I went in I found 
there was a difference. It was much cleaner, and 
there was a smell of medicine-water all through it. 
I didn't like it at first, but Wu Sz-fu said it was very 
healthy. Every day several tens of women and chil- 
dren come there and the doctor examines them no 
matter what is wrong, for she understands both in- 
side and outside diseases. There is one room filled 
full of little crippled children who are being cured. 
I played with them one afternoon, and one boy told 
me all about himself. He had fallen and broken his 



22 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

hip, and the things the Chinese doctors had done to 
it had not helped it at all. His family were very 
poor, so they sent him out into the streets to beg. It 
was winter time, and he was cold and hungry all day 
long and very unhappy. One day one of the spread- 
the-doctrine women came by the place where he lay 
begging, and was so sorry for him that she went and 
asked his father to allow her to have him taken to 
the hospital. He doesn't know yet whether he will 
ever be able to walk again, but he says he is so 
happy there that he doesn't much care. 

"The foreigners have schools as well as hospitals. 
Wu Sz-fu took me over to see them one day on the 
other side of the city, over Serpent Hill. They have 
a big school for boys, and one for girls, too, where 
they are taught everything. If Yin-ti and I could 
only go to those schools, I should be perfectly happy. 
Of course I did not see the girls' school, but the one 
for boys was very good to see. They not only have 
fine houses where the boys live, and rooms for them 
to study in, but there are big spaces in which they 
can play and drill. Then, right in the middle of 
everything, they have a worship hall. It is not as 
large as some of the other buildings, but it is far 
more beautiful inside. The day I was there was the 
day they set apart for remembering their ancestors.'' 

"Remembering their ancestors," said Mrs. Chiang 
in astonishment, "why, I thought foreigners had no 
ancestors. I thought that when one of us ate the 
foreign religion, we had to sell our ancestors." 

"That must be a mistake," answered Ch'uen-hsi, 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 23 

"because some of the largest buildings there had been 
built in memory of somebody's ancestors, I don't 
know whose; but they must remember them. This 
worship hall was decorated with banners and the 
most beautiful flowers I ever saw, and it was crowded 
full of people. They read things out of a book about 
some men and women of most ancient days, and 
Wu Sz-fu told me they are taught to remember all 
the holy men and women who have lived and died, 
no matter whose ancestors they are. They sang 
songs about them, too. I could not understand it 
all, but it sounded very beautiful. After their wor- 
ship was over, they had a parade to the cemetery, 
with bugles and a brass band. People followed them 
all along the road and asked questions, and by and 
by they came to the cemetery. I couldn't see any 
coffins, but they told me they had all been put down 
into the ground. They didn't burn any paper money 
for the spirits as we do, nor put food on their graves ; 
but they worshipped their God and sang some more 
songs which were very good to hear. Finally they 
marched home again, and we went back to the hos- 
pital." 

"Well, well! Perhaps this foreign religion is not 
as bad as I thought, if they do not really throw 
away their ancestors. But you said they had a 
school for girls as well as for boys. They don't think 
they can teach girls anything in a school, do they? 
Surely they are not so foolish as that?" 

"Oh, yes; Wu Sz-fu says they have found out that 
the girls can learn as well as the boys. He has a 



24 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

sister in the school and she can read books and play 
the organ. That school is named for a famous 
woman who lived hundreds of years ago, St. Hilda, 
who was full of learning. All the women who come 
out from America to teach there must be very clever 
indeed." 

"Why, that is as it used to be in China in ancient 
times," spoke up Wang Grandfather, a scholar of 
some repute in the village. "There was Ts'ao Ta-ku, 
who lived in the days of the Han dynasty, and who 
was so famous that even the Emperor commended 
her learning. She it was who wrote the valuable 
Nu Kiai— Rules for Women — and there were others 
in those early times nearly as wise. Is it possible 
that we have come to another dynasty of enlightened 
women? Still I do not understand why these foreign 
people do all this work in China. Why do they 
want us to eat their religion?" 

"I couldn't quite understand that, and Wu Sz-fu 
couldn't either, but he is sure they do it with a good 
intention, and it seems to be their custom to try to 
spread their doctrine everywhere. It is strange, but 
he says they insist that theirs is not a foreign re- 
ligion at all, but one that belongs to the whole world, 
quite as much to China as to America. Anyway, I 
want to learn all about it, and then perhaps I shall 
be able to explain it better." 

"Not a foreign religion, but one that belongs to 
the whole world," repeated Wang Grandfather, 
thoughtfully stroking his beard. "After all, that 




GRANDFATHER WANG, A SCHOLAR OF SOME REPUTE 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 25 

sounds very reasonable, for is there not our own 
proverb which says 

& 

All under heaven are one family. 




CHAPTER III 

A GREAT INHERITANCE 

"As we use a glass to examine the forms of things, so we must 
study the past in order to understand the present." 

There are two ways of measuring distance, one 
by miles and the other by time. The first never 
changes, but the second is changing all the time. For 
instance, it is just as many miles from America to 
China to-day as it was when America was first dis- 
covered, but every time a new and faster way of 
traveling is discovered, the distance between the two 
countries grows shorter and shorter in time. In 1843, 
when President Tyler appointed the Hon. Caleb 
Cushing as Minister Extraordinary to China, it took 
nearly six months for him to go from Washington 
to Pekin; now, going by way of Siberia, one may 
make the trip in twenty-four days. Not only this, 
but the United States ended at its western edge with 
Montana in those days, more than five thousand 
miles away from China. Now, the Philippine Islands 
are only seven hundred miles from Canton, so it is 
possible to travel from American possessions to 
Chinese soil in two days. It seems as though every 
year these two nations were growing nearer and 
nearer together. 

26 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 27 

Every time we hear the prayer-book prayer for 
missions, we are reminded of what St. Paul said long 
ago to the people of Athens — God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men, to dwell on all the face of 
the earth. If we think, as St. Paul did, of all the 
countries in the world as making up one great family 
of God's children, then the country we call China 
must rank as the oldest member of the family and 
the United States as the youngest. For many, many 
years China had nothing to do with the rest of the 
world, so most of the nations forgot that they had a 
relation of that name. Some of the younger mem- 
bers of the family of nations had, in fact, never even 
heard of this one, and China herself had no idea how 
many younger brothers and sisters she had. So it 
happened that when, in the middle of the nineteenth 
century, China appeared again before the nations, 
most of them said: "We don't believe she is any 
relation of ours. Look at her queer clothes, her out- 
landish manners, and listen to her funny talk. None 
of our family ever looked like that." It was very 
much like the story books about what happens when 
the long-lost brother comes home and nobody knows 
him. He is so different from all the rest that they 
are sure he cannot belong among them; and then 
suddenly he says something about what happened 
long ago, that shows he really is a son of their own 
father, and they begin rather shyly to make him 
welcome and to tell him about all that has happened 
while he has been away. 

This was almost exactly what happened to China, 



28 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

and it is a satisfaction to us to feel that when she came 
back, we, although we were the youngest member of 
the family, were among the first to recognize her as 
our sister and to try to make her feel that it is really 
so. And just here comes in the difference between the 
long-lost boy of the story and China. When China 
came back into the family she didn't know that she 
belonged to it. She had been so long away from her 
Father, and ours, that she had almost forgotten Him, 
and the biggest piece of work for us to do was to tell 
her all about the Father, and share with her the good 
gifts which had been entrusted to us as loyal Children. 

Those foreigners whom Ch'uen-hsi saw in Wuchang 
had gone out to China to live side by side with their 
Chinese brothers in order to do just this very thing. 
The Chinese didn't know how to take care of them- 
selves when they were sick or hurt, so we built hos- 
pitals and sent doctors and nurses out to help them 
and teach them what to do. They knew practically 
nothing about things which the rest of the world had 
found it very useful to know, such as physical geog- 
raphy and history and languages and science, so we 
started schools where they could go and be taught 
until they knew enough to start their own. Finally, 
they knew terribly little about God, so we opened 
churches wherever there was a chance, and in these 
and in the schools and hospitals, too, tried all the time 
to help them to know and to worship Him. 

The sight Ch'uen-hsi had of these things when he 
took that memorable journey to Wuchang after the 
coffin, was just enough to make him bound to go back 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 29 

there as soon as ever he could. True to his promise, 
he spent all his spare time for six months after his 
grandfather's funeral running errands for the old 
humpback Wing. Not only this, but he succeeded in 
breaking up the fear that the other boys had of the 
old man, for you see Ch'uen-hsi became a sort of hero 
after his long journey, and whoever he chose to con- 
sider his friend became popular among the others. So 
it happened that when the time came for the lucky boy 
to leave home and go up to the foreign school, there 
were plenty of boys left behind who were ready to run 
errands for "funny old Wing of the firework shop." 

It seemed as though the fortune of the T'ien family 
had turned with the success of that first visit. The 
long-desired rain came for the freshening of the crops, 
Father T'ien gradually recovered from his sickness, 
and the neighbors were no longer afraid to befriend 
them. Yin-ti, free from the fear of being sold into 
slavery, grew strong and useful, and pleaded hard to 
be allowed to go to that wonderful school for Chinese 
girls called St. Hilda's. It is more than likely she 
would have pleaded in vain if just then a most re- 
markable thing had not happened. 

You remember the dreadful fate of Wei Tao, the 
poor little girl who fell ill in the home of her be- 
trothed, Wan-tsin? The neighbors all thought her 
dead after she had been turned away from her parents' 
door with the curse of that hairless sickness upon her. 
One day, just as Yin-ti had about given up hope of 
being sent to the foreign school, there came a rumor 
to the town that Wei Tao had not died; that she had 



30 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

wandered far into the country and had somehow come 
into the hands of one of the "Spread-the-Doctrine" 
women who had taken her away to a hospital, and 
afterwards put her into St. Hilda's school. 

Great was the excitement in the Wan family, for 
Wan-tsin had sickened and died of the fever, and all 
these years they believed that Wei Tao had taken her 
revenge by sending her spirit to trouble them. Her 
own father, Wei, started at once for Wuchang to find 
out whether the rumor were true, and if Wei Tao had 
become as fat and learned as they said. Three days 
later he came back full of wonder over what he had 
seen, and convinced that his little daughter, who had 
once been considered such a disgrace to the family, 
was in a fair way to bring great honor upon them by 
her learning. 

His account of the school gave just the spur that 
was needed to persuade Yin-ti's father to send her to 
St. Hilda's, and a happier girl than this one when the 
time finally came for her to go, you could not have 
found in all China. To be sure, many of the neighbors 
still felt that no good could possibly come from having 
anything to do with "heathen foreigners," and they 
came to father and mother T'ien with all sorts of 
dreadful stories about how the gods of China had 
taken their revenge upon people who had done such 
disloyal things in the past. They told, too, how the 
foreigners would make the children discontented with 
their home and their country, and how just as surely 
as they learned the "barbarous language," they would 
insist upon leaving their country and going away no- 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 31 

body knew where, like Hwan-juh's son some years 
before. 

Fortunately for the brother and sister, however, the 
T'ien parents, even the grandparents, had come to be- 
lieve that for them good fortune instead of bad seemed 
to follow their intercourse with the foreigners, so they 
paid very little heed to their doubting neighbors, and 
simply took the precaution they had taken when 
Ch'uen-hsi started out — that is, extra offerings pre- 
sented in the temples and before their ancestral tablets 
and graves. At the last moment, too, old Wing pre- 
sented each child with a charm to wear, which he 
assured them would prevent any foreign spirit entering 
into them, and would keep their eyes continually 
turned towards home. 

So, all things being ready, they set out one fine day 
for Wuchang; a very different journey from Ch'uen- 
hsi's last one that way, and Father T'ien himself took 
them to the schools and handed them over into the 
care of the foreign teachers. 

Now if old Wing had known the sort of things 
Ch'uen-hsi would be expected to learn in the new 
school, he need not have bothered at all about a charm 
to keep him true to China. One of the first things he 
discovered was that he must study a great deal about 
his own country, its history, its geography, its litera- 
ture and its great men. Far from being taught to 
forget it, he found that these foreign people seemed to 
be thinking about it all the time, that they had a sort 
of love for it almost as though it were their own, and 
that they believed it was bound some day to be one 



32 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

of the greatest of all the great nations in the world. 
As Ch'uen-hsi studied more about these other great 
nations, he began to have his doubts about the great- 
ness of his own. He discovered that every time China 
had come into conflict with one of them, she had been 
worsted, that even little Japan had beaten her in a 
war not so very long before, and that these others 
were way ahead of her in railroads and mines and 
such things. When he said so one day to one of his 
teachers, he was told that this was just because China 
never had learned the things that had made the other 
nations strong and successful, and that it was the 
whole purpose of the school to help the boys find out 
the things their country needed. This teacher, who 
was a great friend of all the boys, told Ch'uen-hsi 
how eager he himself was to see China make the best 
use of all her wonderful resources, her iron and coal, 
her rich soil, her splendid harbors, and her great in- 
spiring history. He said that when he first came there 
he wanted to go out into the streets and shout out all 
the things that would make the Chinese into a 
really great nation, but he had discovered that they 
wouldn't believe him if he did, and that it must be 
Chinese boys and girls who would some day make 
away with all the mistaken ideas which were keeping 
their country back, and would lead her out into her 
greatness. 

"It is you, Ch'uen-hsi, and your sister Yin-ti, and 
other boys and girls like you, who have the power to 
make your country what the great GOD of all the 
nations wants her to be," he said, "and in order to be 



CHIN-HSING IN CHIJJA 33 

ready for such a magnificent piece of work, you must 
fit your brain by study, and your body by good play 
and exercise, so that when your chance comes you will 
be ready for it." 

"Yin-ti," questioned the boy, "what can she do for 
her country? She is a girl, and will never be able to 
work hard or to fight." 

"Will she not?" answered the teacher. "Ah, Ch'uen- 
hsi, some day you will find out that hard work is not 
all done with the hands; that some of the very best 
fighting in all the world is done with the head and the 
heart. I will give you a motto which is as true as the 
blue of the sky. It will do for you and for Yin-ti, and 
for China, but I have an idea that it will be easier for 
Yin-ti to attain to it than for you: 'A wise man will 
make himself lowly in order to conquer/ So said 
Lao-Tse, one of your own sages, hundreds of years 
ago." 

Here was new learning for our hero, and sometimes 
it all seemed rather contradictory to him. He must 
know all about China and be very proud of all that 
was good in her history, and yet he must realize the 
mistakes she had made and spend his life trying to 
help set them right. It was not going to be an easy 
matter, but he had made up his mind to do his very 
best, so he plunged with a will into the great volumes 
of China's story. American boys think it is a fair task 
to learn about what has been going on in America 
since 1492. How do you think they would like it if 
their country had a history going back two thousand 
years and more before Christ, with about five hundred 



34 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

emperors' names to learn? Ch'uen-hsi didn't have to 
learn all these ; only the most important of them, but, 
cutting out the unimportant things, there was more 
left than most boys would care for. 

To begin with, there was Sen Lung, who lived nearly 
four thousand years ago, and was a great farmer. He 
taught the people how to take care of their fields and 
raise crops, and, after his death, they honored him so 
that they worshipped him as a god. Farmers in China 
are still called after him — "Lung-fu." After him no- 
body of special importance lived there, until in 551 
B. C. the greatest of all China's great men was born, 
K'ung Fu-tsz, whom the world calls Confucius. This 
is the man upon whose sayings most of the best laws 
and customs of China have been modelled ever since. 
He was very wise and very just, and sometimes people 
have thought that if he could only have been born five 
hundred years later he might have been one of our 
Lord's truest disciples, and saved from making some 
of the great mistakes he did. 

His father was a famous general, and although he 
had nine daughters, he had reached the age of seventy 
years without having a son. Then he married, as his 
second wife, a very young girl, and it is said that she 
had a dream in which she was told that she would 
have a son, who would be born in a hollow mulberry 
tree and become very famous. When she told this 
dream to her husband he told her that there was a 
cave near by called "The hollow mulberry tree," and 
sure enough, in course of time, her son was born there. 
They say that a stream conveniently bubbled up for 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 35 

his first bath, and then immediately dried up again. 
It was most fortunate that this boy was gifted with 
brains, for he certainly had no beauty to boast of. 
Here is his description: "Mouth like the sea, lips like 
an ox or dragon's back/' As if this were not bad 
enough, he had such a large bump on his head that he 
was named "Mound," according to the Chinese custom 
of giving a personal name from some prominent feat- 
ure. The name K'ung Fu-tsz, which was given to him 
later, means K'ung the Master, K'ung being his family 
name. 

When he grew up he was extra tall, very dark, and 
still very far from being handsome. He never seems 
to have cared much about anything except music and 
study, and, very early in life, he became famous as a 
great teacher. When he was nineteen he married, but 
he could not have been a very comfortable person to 
live with, for report has it that he was terribly par- 
ticular about all sorts of ceremonies and never allowed 
anyone to be familiar with him. He described himself 
as follows: "At fifteen I set my mind upon wisdom; 
at thirty I stood firm; at forty I was free from doubt; 
at fifty I understood the laws of heaven; at sixty my 
ear was docile; at seventy I could follow the desires 
of my heart without transgressing the right." When 
asked once what his chief desires were he replied: 
"To comfort the aged, be faithful to friends, and cher- 
ish the young." Somebody asked one of Confucius' 
sons whether he had ever been given any special les- 
sons by his father. "No," he replied. "But as he was 
standing alone one day I hastened across the room, and 



36 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

he said: 'Have you studied the Book of Poetry?' 
'No/ I answered. 'If you do not study the Book of 
Poetry you will have nothing to talk about.' On 
going out I set myself to study the Book of Poetry. 
Another day he was again standing alone, and as I 
hastened across the hall he asked: 'Have you studied 
the rules of ceremony?' 'No/ I answered. 'If you 
do not study the rules of ceremony you will have no 
standing.' On going out I set myself to study the 
rules of ceremony. These two lessons I have received." 
As there are some three hundred rules of ceremony, 
that would seem to be enough of a task even for the 
son of Confucius. 

Confucius himself did not write very much; his 
famous Analects or precepts having been mostly put 
together by his disciples after he died, from the mem- 
ory of what he had said. These Analects are made 
up of twenty short chapters, which are written in a 
style that is about as different from modern Chinese 
as Latin is from English. No well-trained Chinese boy 
would consider his education complete unless he could 
recite them all by heart, though very few of them 
really understand what they mean. 

Now all this does not sound as though Confucius 
had been very much use to China, but he really did 
get hold of some ideas which helped the people to 
make good laws and to act towards one another in a 
way which, at the very least, was better than any 
other nation for hundreds of years, His sayings were 
cut and dried and strict, and he never pretended to 
teach his people anything about religion, but none the 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 37 

less they were the best ideas China had to go by, and 
she valued them so highly that, after Confucius died, 
the Chinese decided that he was a god, and from that 
day to this they have worshipped him. In the Chinese 
schools, before the boys go to their work, they bow low 
before a picture of Confucius and repeat a prayer, and 
all this, although they know quite well what the great 
sage said of himself: "I know how birds can fly, 
fishes can swim, and beasts can run, yet I do not 
understand this life, so how can I know about a future 
lifer 

Of course, in the mission school Confucius was not 
worshipped. Ch'uen-hsi was taught all about him, 
aud helped to see the value of what he had given to 
China, but although his picture hung in the school- 
room just as in the Chinese schools, the boys looked 
upon it as that of a wise man who must be honored 
and no more. 

Next to Confucius, in the history of China's great 
men, comes Shi Huang-ti, "the Napoleon of China," 
who united all the petty kingdoms of the country 
under one empire. He was a member of the Ch'in 
family from which came the name of China. This, by 
the way, is not a name which is ever heard in the 
country itself. There they call it the Middle King- 
dom, or the Flowery Kingdom, and now, officially, the 
Middle Flowery Kingdom. The Emperor, Shi Huang- 
ti, came to the throne when he was only thirteen years 
of age. He was most capable, but dreadfully proud 
and ambitious. The great wall had already been be- 
gun, but he repaired and finished it until it stretched 



38 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

fifteen hundred miles around the northern boundary 
of the empire. He wanted his subjects to forget all 
the emperors who had gone before, and he tried to 
have all the books of the country burned. The schol- 
ars went quickly to work and buried their books in 
the ground to save them, but unfortunately Shi 
Huang-ti got word of it and buried the scholars alive 
with their books, four hundred and sixty of them. The 
books of Confucius were destroyed, but after the Ch'in 
family came to an end, these were written over again 
from memory. 

After the Ch'in family came the Han, which is why 
we sometimes hear the Chinese called the Sons of Han. 
Then came the T'ang, which is why people often speak 
of China as the Hills of T'ang; and so on, family 
after family on the throne, until the Manchu dynasty 
came into power in 1644. They came from Man- 
churia, outside China, and were still in power when 
Ch'uen-hsi went to school, and would probably be in 
power now but for him and a lot of other boys like 
him, but that is getting ahead, and we must go back 
to Wuchang and take a look at Yin-ti. 

Like Ch'uen-hsi, she quickly found that the teach- 
ers at St. Hilda's were determined that the girls who 
came to the school should be fitted in every way to be 
of use to their country. Way back in the time of the 
T'ang dynasty, when China was in the height of her 
prosperity, somebody did a stupid thing and started 
binding the women's feet. Some say it was because 
one of the princesses had club feet, and the other 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 39 

ladies of the court wanted to honor her by imitating 
her shoes; others say that a princess, in order to make 
herself more attractive in the eyes of her husband, 
began tying up her feet and wearing beautiful little 
shoes all covered with tiny bells which tinkled when 
she walked. Whatever was the cause of it, one thing 
is sure; it has been a terrible thing for the women 
and girls of China ever since. One of the first things 
the foreign teachers tried to do was to get the girls 
who came to their schools to unbind their feet, but 
although they did finally succeed in getting the Em- 
press Dowager to pass an edict abolishing foot binding, 
the custom was so strong that ever so many of the 
girls who went to school with Yin-ti had had their 
feet bound, as indeed, her own had been from the time 
she was five years old. At first she didn't much want 
to have them unbound, having always been taught 
that they were a sign of good breeding, but when she 
found how active and useful Wei Tao and some of the 
other girls were who had been in the school for some 
years, she decided to sacrifice the beauty of her "Lily 
feet" to the new life she was to live, and suffer the 
pain of unbinding. Again, another thing she had to 
learn was to stand up straight and hold her shoulders 
back. For years and years it has been considered 
beautiful by the women of China to stoop a little for- 
ward and hold their shoulders close together in front, 
and it has meant a great deal of trouble for their poor 
contracted lungs. Stupid? Yes, but over here in the 
United States where, by all that is sensible, we ought 
to know better, we have sometimes done things in the 



40 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

name of fashion which were every whit as stupid and 
almost as bad for us. Yin-ti had her reward when she 
left these old customs behind her, for before very long 
she was going through the bean-bag drills and playing 
basket-ball with an energy and delight she had never 
dreamed of, and was growing stronger every day. 

Hardly less did she enjoy the new use of her brain. 
A bright girl to begin with, and rather better edu- 
cated, thanks to her father, than most of the girls of 
her class, she quickly picked up the idea of study and 
learned wonderful things, not only about her own 
land, but about others as well. Like Ch'uen-hsi, just 
at first she was inclined to feel that her own country 
was not so great as she had been taught to believe, 
but her teachers laid much stress upon what a wonder- 
ful nation China might become if once her sons and 
daughters were ready to devote their lives to making 
her so, and her heart beat high with ambition and 
patriotic resolutions. 

"Do you believe it is true, Wei Tao," she asked, 
"that American women are as much use to their coun- 
try as the men?" 

"They say it is so," she answered, "they do not 
fight, of course, nor make the laws, but they all may 
go to the schools, and many of them become great 
teachers and artists and writers, and in their own 
homes they are every bit as much honored as their 
husbands and sons." 

"Oh, how I would like to go there to live," said 
Yin-ti. 

"If you did," answered Wei Tao, "you would lose 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 41 

the great opportunity which our teachers have given 
us to help our Chinese sisters understand what Chris- 
tian women may be worth." 

"Christian women, but I am not a Christian/' said 
Yin-ti. "Must one become a Christian in order to 
be of use to China ?" 

A strange look came over the face of Wei Tao, as 
she answered: "Must one? Wait a little while, 
Yin-ti, until you have learned what the teachings of 
the great Christ have meant to women all over the 
world. I cannot tell you why it is necessary for you 
to be a Christian in order to be of use to China, but 
I can tell you that when you know more about Him, 
you will not be able to be anything else." 

Yin-ti did not answer, but she wondered, as she 
often had before, what it was that made the faces of 
her schoolmates and the foreign teachers light up as 
they did whenever they spoke of the Christian God. 
She went to the worship hall which Ch'uen-hsi had 
spoken of, and thrilled all down her back when the 
"Praise Songs" filled it. Down the middle of the 
building stretched a long, high screen, so that she 
could not see Ch'uen-hsi, who sat among the boys on 
the other side of it; but she imagined she heard his 
voice singing, and sometimes she was allowed to see 
him out of school hours and talk over all the wonder- 
ful new things they were learning. As the months 
went by they needed Wing's charms less and less, and 
one day, as the school year drew towards its end, 
Ch'uen-hsi met his sister with a radiant face. 



42 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

"Yin-ti," he said, "I believe I shall find the answer 
to Confucius' riddle." 

"Which riddle?" 

"Confucius once said: 'To find the central clue to 
a man's life, which unites him to the life of the world, 
that is, indeed, the highest human attainment, but 
man is seldom capable of it.' I believe I have found 
the way to that clue." 

"How have you done it?" she asked eagerly, "and 
what is the way?" 

"You know the great Boone University," answered 
Ch'uen-hsi, "where I hope to be able to go after I 
leave the school? It has a motto, and as soon as I 
heard what it was I was sure that if I could fit myself 
to follow it I should discover the clue. Those who 
take that motto for their own must give their lives — 
Tor GOD, For the Church, and For the Country'— 
and this is what I mean to try to do." 

" 'Pro Deo et Ecclesia et Patria/ 

Boone University, 

Wuchang, China." 



CHAPTER IV 



THE NEW IDEAL 



One September afternoon, eight years after Ch'uen- 
hsi's first journey to Wuchang, he set out over the 
same road again with a heart beating high with new 
hope. He was not alone, although Yin-ti was left at 
home this time in charge of a little native school of 
her own. Sun Wu, whom she had promised to marry 
some day, and who had been a good friend to Ch'uen- 
hsi at the University, was with him, and, as they 
walked down to the Han River, they talked in under- 
tones of the great adventures that lay before them — 
adventures greater by far than any Ch'uen-hsi had 
dared to imagine when first he trudged that way with 
his chickens under his arm. Sun Wu, who was a num- 
ber of years older than Ch'uen-hsi, had travelled down 
from a northern province, where his home was, and 
was full of news. 

"It is as certain as the rising of the sun," he pro- 
tested, "everywhere I have come across men who are 
ready to rise up as soon as the order is spoken. China 
has had enough of the Manchus, and these men know 
that the only way we can ever make a place for our- 
selves in the world is to get rid of them once and for 
all." 

43 



44 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

"Tell me/' said Ch'uen-hsi, "how did you ever come 
to think these things?" 

"That is rather a long story," answered Sun Wu, 
"but I will tell it as shortly as I can. My home, as 
you know, is in the province of Chih-li, not far from 
Pekin. Our next door neighbor, when I was quite a 
small boy, was a man named K'ang Yu-wei, who was 
very much in the confidence of the Emperor, Kwang 
Hsu. K'ang had become convinced, because of the 
poor showing China had made in her war with Japan, 
that unless the whole scheme of education and govern- 
ment were changed, the country would soon be over- 
come and divided up among the more powerful nations 
of the world. He, and a few others who agreed with 
him, succeeded in persuading the Emperor to send a 
number of young men out to be educated in America 
and Germany, and to do away with the old system of 
examinations. We were very much excited over all he 
told us of the new plans, especially my father, who 
had fought in the war and been tremendously im- 
pressed with the patriotism of the Japanese. 

"Then one day there was dreadful trouble and fear 
in our street, for word came to us that K'ang Yu-wei, 
who had gone to Pekin to confer with the Emperor, 
had been seized and beheaded by the ministers of the 
Empress Dowager, and Kwang Hsu himself had been 
turned out of power and made a prisoner in his own 
palace. A terrible time followed for all who were sup- 
posed to have had anything to do with the reformers, 
and we trembled in our shoes for my father, who was 
known to have been a friend of K'ang Yu-wei. I 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 45 

don't think he would ever have come through that 
time with his head on his shoulders, if it had not hap- 
pened that my uncle, who was staying with us just 
then, belonged to an anti-reform society called the 
Boxers. This society was popular with the Empress 
Dowager, and you know how, but a short time after 
that, she made use of their zeal in an attempt to get 
rid of all the foreigners in China. That was a year 
in my life which I would be glad to forget if I could." 

Sun Wu stopped for a moment, but Ch'uen-hsi 
asked: 

"Is it true, as they say, that your father joined the 
Boxers before he died?" 

"It is true, and it is not true! My father was so 
discouraged by the failure of K'ang Yu-wei and the 
reform party, that my uncle succeeded in partly per- 
suading him the only safety for the country lay in 
stopping off all contact with the rest of the world and 
going back to the old customs. He never did entirely 
believe this, but he knew that something must be 
done, and the reformers seemed, as far as he could see, 
to be helpless; so in that terrible year 1900, when the 
Boxers were let loose upon all foreigners and foreign 
Chinese (that is, Christians), my father went with a 
party of them to a neighboring town one day, and I 
followed him. It was a town where there was a mis- 
sion compound; a school, little chapel and teacher's 
house, like so many which we have seen since then, 
but which I had never seen before. We went at night, 
and the flaming of the men's torches, their cries and 
horns excited me so that I howled aloud as I followed 



46 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

them. When they came to the compound they made 
a circle about it and set fire to the buildings. I 
couldn't see much of what happened, and was intent 
on watching my father, who lingered rather on the 
outskirts of the crowd. Then, all of a sudden, by the 
light of the burning buildings, I saw a sight I never 
can forget. Out from among those shouting men 
came a white woman, the first I ever saw, with a baby 
in her arms. She was hurt, and her long yellow hair 
fell all dishevelled about her shoulders, but there was 
a strange look almost of joy upon her face, and I 
thought I had never seen anything so beautiful. My 
father was close to her as she came out between the 
other men, and he must have felt about her as I did, 
for suddenly, as she tottered to her knees, she reached 
up and put her baby into his arms. What happened 
after that I never exactly knew, for the men closed 
in about her, and one of them snatched the baby away 
from my father. For one moment he stood watching 
them and then he turned and ran from that place, and 
I after him, my teeth chattering with fear of I knew 
not what. I had not far to follow, for I came upon 
him quickly where he had fallen in the dark, his own 
sword plunged deep into his side. 'Is that you, Sun 
Wu?' he gasped, *I could not do it! When China kills 
such as those, she kills herself, even as I have!' and 
with that he died. 

"I could not easily forget words like those, after 
seeing what I had seen, and all through the years that 
followed, while it was being proved beyond question 
that China could not shut out the rest of the world, 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 47 

and that my father's words were true, I was possessed 
with the determination to get to Japan and find out 
some better way than either that of the Boxers or the 
unfortunate K'ang Yu-wei. So, by and by, I did get 
there, and found ever so many young men like myself, 
eager to be of use to our country if only we could find 
the way. There, too, I heard one night that wonderful 
Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who convinced us that until the 
Manchu rule is ended, little can be done in the way of 
lasting reform. The rest you know — how I met Liu 
Fu in Japan and heard about Boone University, how 
I went there for four years, and have done the best I 
could to fit myself for the service of my country, and 
how we are planning now in the city of Wuchang, as 
well as in many other places, for the revolution that 
will put an end to the old order and let the people rule 
themselves. One thing you do not know is how 
eagerly I have longed all these last years to be able 
to tell my father about the new life that is coming to 
China." 

Sun Wu ended, and for a time they walked on in 
silence. Then Ch'uen-hsi asked how soon the revolu- 
tion would be started. 

"Ah, that is a thing which no one knows except the 
chief leaders. There is much to do first. Sun Yat Sen 
is travelling in other lands, talking with the Chinese 
students and gaining their interest for our cause. 
Secret companies are busy all over the country pre- 
paring ammunition, so that when the time comes the 
Manchu troops will find a strong force against them. 
It is in this work that your old friend Wing, the 



48 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

humpback, is engaged in Hankow, and they tell me 
he has been most useful." 

"Poor old Wing," sighed Ch'uen-hsi, "I have tried 
so hard to convince him of the uselessness of his 
charms and magic devices, and to explain to him the 
simple ways of Christian teaching. He will have none 
of it, and one day I found that he had made a sort 
of incense, which he burned whenever I had been 
to see him, to clear his room of the 'foreign doc- 
trine' I taught. I have heard that even now, while he 
works constantly in preparation for the coming revo- 
lution, he insists upon mixing strange things with his 
powder, bits of snake skin and the dried brains of rats, 
to make it more deadly; also he spends hours in the 
temple worshipping the god of war. Will he ever 
learn any better, do you think?" 

"I am afraid he is too fixed in his ways ever to 
change them, but surely God must understand and 
reward his devotion to what he believes to be right." 

So talking they came finally to the Han River, and 
took the boat which would land them — one at the 
University, where his education was drawing to its 
end; the other in Hankow, where the long planned-for 
revolution was to claim his service sooner than he 
knew. 

Two weeks later there was great excitement among 
the students on the Mission compound at Wuchang. 
Mr. Chu, a graduate of Boone University, who was 
acting as interpreter for the American Consul-General 
at Hankow, came across the river in haste with start- 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 49 

ling news. The revolutionary headquarters in the 
Russian Concession of the city had been discovered. 

"No one knew the secret place," he said, "until yes- 
terday, when the accidental explosion of some pow- 
der which the revolutionists used to make bombs, 
gave it away. Mr. Sun Wu, being over hasty, and 
not careful enough, exploded his face. Instantly he 
went downstairs, his injured face covered under his 
long garment, and made his way to tl^e Japanese hos- 
pital nearby. By that time the accident was reported 
through the Russian quarters, and the Consul went 
to the place, the Chinese Deputy going with him in 
the hope of arresting some revolutionists. They found 
only one old humpbacked man busily compounding 
charms out of the exploded powder. Afterwards they 
discovered that he had come back there, after his 
companions had run away, in order to rescue the book 
in which the names of the revolutionists were regis- 
tered. This they took from him, and, by its help, they 
traced two others who had been with him, and brought 
them all before the Viceroy. Having examined them, 
the Viceroy ordered them instantly killed, and took 
charge of the registry book. 

"That same evening there was a meeting in another 
secret place, when Mr. Sun Wu, who was hurt in the 
face, said to his friends: 'Brothers, as the secret has 
been discovered and the name registry taken away, 
the Viceroy will kill all of us whose names are there. 
So you must rise now or suffer death. Go to Wu- 
chang and ask our brothers to begin the revolution 
this evening, with fire as the signal/ Accordingly 



50 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

they went to Wuchang. No doubt you have heard 
the firing and seen the signal fires; you do not know 
that the soldiers have been to General Li Yuan-hung 
and compelled him to take command over the revolu- 
tionary troops, that the Viceroy and General Chang 
Piao, of the Manchu army, have escaped out of the 
city in disguise, and that to-morrow General Li will 
send an escort with the American Consul General to 
bring out the iknericans and the students of Boone 
and St. Hilda's before the war is well started in 
Wuchang." 

After that there followed days of great anxiety and 
excitement at Boone University. The women in the 
compound and the younger boys of the school were all 
packed off down the river and away to their homes. 
Among the older boys, some went home, many joined 
the revolutionists, and a few stayed to do what they 
could in the compound, which was turned into a great 
hospital for the soldiers, under the control of the Red 
Cross Society. Ch'uen-hsi was among these last, and 
succeeded in making himself extremely useful to the 
mission doctors and to the teachers who had stayed 
in Wuchang as nurses. But for them, indeed, he 
would have gone into the thick of the fighting, where 
he longed to be, but they persuaded him to stay and 
act as messenger in the hospital, and between the 
Red Cross headquarters and the city. At the time, 
he could hardly keep from running away to the army 
whenever he heard firing going on, but afterwards he 
thanked the good fortune that kept him where he 
was, for during those weeks that followed in Wuchang 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 51 

he learned lessons that stood him in good stead all 
his life. 

First of all, he was thrilled by the splendid bravery 
of many of the soldiers in the hospital. Day after 
day he stood beside men who were giving their lives 
for the new China that was to be, and who died per- 
fectly confident in the success of their cause. Day by 
day he watched the comfort and courage that fol- 
lowed wherever those wonderful doctors and nurses 
went. Hour by hour he learned there, in the presence 
of life and death questions, the triumphant power of 
the Christian faith over both men's lives and their 
death-beds; for the contrast could easily be seen. 
There were many among the dying soldiers who knew 
no more about the life to which they were going than 
Confucius did. Some of them were willing to die for 
China, if they must, but they would have given any- 
thing to have been able to get hold of one of poor old 
Wing's charms to help them through. Others were 
there who begged piteously that their bodies might be 
sent home, so that their relatives could burn the 
necessary money and clothes upon their graves, and 
worship their spirits in the ancestral tablets. In the 
unsettled state of the neighborhood this could not be 
promised them, and their terror of what they knew 
nothing of was pitiful to see. Still others there were 
who cared neither for China nor for the Manchus, 
regular soldiers in the imperial army, who spent their 
time railing sometimes at the revolutionists, some- 
times at the Manchu leaders, and who died in hideous 



52 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

dread of being born again in the form of some un- 
lucky animal. 

As Ch'uen-hsi went about among these people, he 
found his patriotism growing stronger every day, and 
with it, all around it, a strange new love of all the 
world and all the people in it. He watched the con- 
stant work and courage of the foreign nurses and 
doctors, he went to their services of prayer for China, 
and praise for what GOD was allowing them to do 
for her, and gradually there crept into his heart such 
a love and gratitude to the One Who had made these 
people what they were, that he discovered the real 
meaning of the Boone University motto, and deter- 
mined to give his life, first "For God and His 
Church/' and then "For Country." 

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the war turned first this 
way and then that for the revolutionary soldiers 
around Wuchang. From the top of the library one 
night Ch'uen-hsi watched the city of Hankow swept 
by flames which rioters had started after the imperial 
army took possession. For a night and a day, as he 
went about his work, he kept his ears open for the 
bombs with which everyone expected Wuchang to be 
bombarded from the neighboring hill. Just at the 
start the revolutionists' attack had been so sudden 
that they swept everything before them, but, after a 
time, the imperial troops gained control over most of 
the surrounding country, and it is likely that both 
the great cities on the Yangtse River would have 
fallen into their hands had it not been that losses in 
other provinces finally convinced Yuan Shi Kai that 




PONTOON BRIDGE BY USE OF WHICH THE IMPERIAL SOLDIERS 
WERE ABLE TO TAKE HANYANG 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 53 

he must make a truce with the revolutionists in order 
to save the country. 

All the world has heard of Yuan Shi Kai, and it is 
possible that some day or other somebody will write 
his life so that people may understand just why he 
did some of the things he did do. At present he is 
somewhat of a riddle, but one thing is sure — he is 
undoubtedly very wise and level-headed. One thing 
he did, back in 1900, which China must always be 
grateful to him for — he saw that the Boxer riots were 
the very worst way to try to meet the power of the 
world outside the Chinese Empire, and, at consider- 
able peril to himself, he refused to allow any such 
thing to go on in the two provinces over which he was 
Viceroy, and he protected the foreigners and the 
Christian Chinese. Then when the Emperor and the 
Empress Dowager died, and poor little five-year-old 
Hsuan-Tung became the Emperor of all China, ap- 
parently Yuan Shi Kai believed that the best thing 
for his country was to keep this little Manchu boy 
on the throne and give him plenty of advisors. This 
was just what the revolutionists did not believe. 
They wanted to get rid of the Manchu rule forever, 
and establish a republic something like ours. When, 
under the leadership of Sun Yat Sen and his generals, 
they had proved that they could do this, a very re- 
markable thing happened. Sun Yat Sen and Yuan 
Shi Kai met and talked it all over and decided that 
the best thing for China would be for Yuan Shi Kai 
to become the President of the new Republic and lead 
the people to accent the very things which, as head 



54 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

of the Imperial army, he had fought against. At this 
time, Sun Yat Sen himself was President, and it would 
be hard to find in all history a more patriotic act 
than the quiet way in which he turned over the place 
he had won to the man who had been his enemy, 
convinced that Yuan Shi Kai could carry out his 
hopes for the whole country better than he could him- 
self. 

Two other things happened at that time which 
marked the division line, as it were, between the 
China that had been and the China that was to be. 

A long procession made its way out from the city 
of Nanking one February day in 1912, to the tomb 
of Chu Yuan-Chang, the first and greatest Emperor 
of the Ming Dynasty. The Mings held the throne of 
China for two hundred and seventy-five years before 
the Manchus came down from the north and took 
possession of it. All through the rule of the unpopu- 
lar Manchus the Chinese had sighed for the good old 
times of the Mings; so, very shortly after the Man- 
chu Dynasty came to an end, the leading man of the 
nation, Sun Yat Sen, who was President at that time, 
and his Cabinet, and a lot of officials and soldiers, 
went out to inform the spirit of Chu Yuan-Chang 
that China was once more in the hands of Chinese 
rulers. They had a lot of different patriotic exer- 
cises, and Sun Yat Sen read a "prayer" which closed 
like this: 

"Your people have come to inform your Majesty 
to-day of the final victory. May this lofty shrine 
wherein you rest gain fresh lustre from to-day's event, 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 55 

and may your excellent example inspire your descen- 
dants in the times which are to come. Spirit, accept 
this offering!" 

The other thing that happened very shortly after 
this was not so picturesque, but was really far more 
extraordinary. The men who were trying to plan the 
Constitution of the new Chinese Republic, and who 
were wise enough to realize, in part at least, the diffi- 
culties ahead of them, sent out an appeal to the 
Christians of all lands, asking that they would pray 
to their GOD for China and for her new government. 
When you remember that for about four thousand 
years China had had nothing to do with the rest of 
the world, when you think of the many gods in which 
her people had put their trust, and realize how un- 
fortunate she had been so far in her dealings with 
Christian nations, this appeal will thrill you almost 
as it thrilled Ch'uen-hsi when first he heard it had 
gone out. 

What did it mean to him? It meant that those 
little prayer services for China, which he had taken 
part in with such zeal in the Red Cross Hospital in 
Wuchang, would be multiplied all over the world. It 
meant that his country, in her hour of need, was 
turning away from those old ideas which he had 
learned were untrue, and was reaching out for just 
the things which he longed to help her to get. It 
meant to him personally, that there was no way in 
which he could so surely serve China as by going to 
the theological school and fitting himself with the 



56 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

very best that was in him, to guide his fellow coun- 
trymen into the presence of the GOD Who had loved 
them "with an everlasting love," and Who, "with 
loving kindness," was drawing them to Himself. 



CHAPTER V 
"must one be a christian ?" 

All this time while we have been talking about the 
Revolution and Ch'uen-hsi's part in it, we have left 
poor Yin-ti busily teaching the little school in her 
native town, and anxiously waiting for word of Sun 
Wu. When the news of his accident first came to 
her she was eager to start at once and hurry to Han- 
kow, but Father T'ien knew very well that she could 
not help Sun Wu by going to him in the middle of a 
besieged city; that she would indeed only be a care 
to him. He himself went to join the revolutionists, 
promising to send back word of Sun Wu and Ch'uen- 
hsi if he could get a chance. 

So it happened that one day, as Yin-ti sat among 
her pupils, there came a knock on the door and in 
walked a boy who reminded her a good deal of 
Ch'uen-hsi, as he had been when he started out on 
his eventful journey after Grandfather T'ien's coffin. 
He was a sturdy boy, but looked dusty and tired, 
as though he had come a long way, and under his 
arm he carried a long pole and a bundle. 

"My name is Hsin-tsz" (faithful son), he said, 
"and I am sent by the honorable father of Ch'uen-hsi 
of the Red Cross to Yin-ti, with tidings." 

57 



58 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

"I am Yin-ti," she answered, "what tidings do you 
bring?" 

With that he handed to her a letter, written in 
English by Ch'uen-hsi. Here it is: 

"To my Honorable Sister Yin-ti: 

"Our father has just passed through this place and 
has recommended to me this boy, Hsin-tsz, as mes- 
senger of news to you. All here are in good order, 
including Sun Wu, whose face is mending from ex- 
plosion. He is spending his time while mending roll- 
ing bandages for soldiers in hospital. After this he 
will take position under the Government. Our father 
is in the middle of the fighting, where I would gladly 
be, but could not because of persuasion of teachers 
here, who desired me to be useful in hospital work. 
I have made up my mind to study especially the 
Christian religion, and become, if possible, a priest 
of that to my country. 

"These messages, and greetings to Honorable 
Wang Grandfather, I send by hand of Hsin-tsz, who 
is orphan because of Revolution. By him also Sun 
Wu sends as favor this five-color flag of the new 
Republic. 

"Your brother, 

"Ch'uen-hsi." 

Yin-ti read this letter and turned to Hsin-tsz, who 
was unwrapping the bundle he had brought. 

"See, children," she said, "this is the flag of your 
country, your new free country in which you will see 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 59 

wonders happen before you die. Look at its five 
colors. They stand for the five great divisions of 
China, as you know, but they stand for far more 
than that. When you see them think of what those 
colors might mean in the life of the nation: White 
stands for purity, blue for steadfastness, red. for 
courage, yellow has always been the Chinese color, 
and in this case might well mean loyalty, and black — 
the absence of all color — must be the foundation vir- 
tue of unselfishness by means of w T hich boys and girls 
like you will be able to help your country gain all 
the rest. Let us pray to God to help us think of 
these things whenever we see this flag, and then you 
may go, for there are many things I want to talk of 
with Hsin-tsz." 

"Tell me, Hsin-tsz," she asked after the children 
had gone, "where did my father find you, and how 
does it happen that, as my brother writes, you are 
an orphan?" 

"My mother is long dead," he answered, "and my 
father, uncle and brother were all killed in the riots 
in Hankow city. I also would surely have died, for 
I wanted to go after them, had it not been for T'ien 
Ko-ling, your honorable father. He caught me as I 
ran, and said: 'Boy, if you have a love-your-country 
heart you will not throw away a life she has need of. 
Come with me/ and I went. He took me to the 
Benevolent Hospital, for I had been hit in the head 
with a stone and was weak, and needed nursing. 
Now they have sent me with these messages to you, 



60 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

and when I go back it has been promised me that I 
shall be put to use in the army." 

"Go then," she said, "but after the fighting is over, 
what will you do? Where will you go now that you 
have no home?" 

"They say that I shall go to the Christian Trade 
School at Ichang, where my family has lived, but 
indeed I do not know about that. I want to be of 
use at once. Is it necessary, do you think, to be a 
Christian in order to serve one's country?" 

Then there came over Yin-ti's face, if she had but 
known it, that same look of confident joy that she 
had wondered at when first she went to school and 
saw it on the faces of her teachers and school friends. 
Instinctively she put her hand on Hsin-tsz's shoulder 
and turned him toward her as she answered: 

"Is it necessary? Once when I was about your age 
I asked that same questicm of Wei-Tao, and I will 
answer you even as she answered me. Wait and 
study and watch the ways of men, those who are 
Christians and those who are not. Look at the his- 
tory of nations where the Christian God is wor- 
shipped, and compare it with that of the peoples who 
have not known Him. Look into the homes of the 
missionaries and of those among your own country- 
men who have made it their chief business to honor 
Him in all things. Look finally into the temples of 
the thousand gods, and the faces of their priests, and 
then go early in the morning into one of the Christian 
churches and listen to the tidings of the 'God Who 
cares.' China needs your help, but she needs the very 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 61 

best help you can give, and, when you have done 
these things, I think you will know that in order to 
give her that, and be to her indeed Hsin-tsz, a faith- 
ful son, it is necessary to be a Christian. Take my 
greetings back to my father and to Ch'uen-hsi and 
Sun Wu in the hospital, and tell Ch'uen-hsi I believe 
he has chosen the most wise life." 

After he had gone Yin-ti sat long in the little 
schoolhouse, the five-colored flag spread out at her 
feet. Hsin-tsz's question had set her thinking, and 
back over the path she had told him to follow she 
let her mind wander until before her eyes she saw the 
things she had tried to point out to him. 

First she saw the nations, those whose strength and 
energy had led the world; and she knew that, al- 
though terrible mistakes had been made by them and 
cruel things done, they had none the less gone steadily 
ahead because of the great qualities of truth and 
justice, purity and brotherly kindness, which Christ 
brought into the world and which men have in so far 
as they follow His leadership. Then she turned to 
the great un-Christian countries and saw dreadful 
signs of falsehood and injustice, impurity and selfish- 
ness, and men trying to find their way out of these 
things by the help of gods their own poor minds had 
imagined, and idols which they had made to repre- 
sent them. 

Next there passed before her mind the picture of 
a child who had come one day to the door of her 
school dressed quite nicely in the clothes of a little 
girl, with earrings in ears and a chain and locket 



62 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

hanging down in front. She had asked the child's 
name and been told it was Siao P'in (small girl), 
when suddenly the little person burst out with: 

"But I am no girl; my name is Wei-tsu (the one 
who becomes sufficient), of the honorable family of 
Kwong. I am the only son in my father's house, and 
they dress me in the clothes of my sisters in order 
that the jealous spirit which is against our family 
may think I am a girl and leave me alone. I have 
four sisters, but they are of little use, and before me 
my parents buried my brother twice and burned his 
spirit at last, so that I might be born and grow 
strong." 

"Buried him twice, and burned his spirit," ex- 
claimed Yin-ti, "what do you mean?" For, although 
unwelcome daughters were often quietly put out of 
the way in China, it was most unusual for a son to 
be so treated. 

"Twice he was born, lived to be three years old, 
and died on the eve of the New Year. A third time, 
as that day drew near, he grew sick and my parents 
knew him for what he was. They had thought the 
others were separate boys, but now they knew that 
it was this same one, sent to them by an angry god, 
and born over and over simply to give them the 
trouble of feeding and burying him. To stop this 
they took him, all sick and ugly, to the execution 
ground, wrapped him in a mat and poured kerosene 
over it, so that he would never dare to come back and 
trouble them." 

"What a horrible thing! How could they do it?" 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 63 

"They had to do it in order that I might carry on 
the family line, but I am afraid of the anger of that 
dead brother. Otherwise, do you think I would ever 
wear the clothes of a girl or answer to the stupid 
name of Siao P'in?" 

Yin-ti remembered how she had gone with this 
poor "Sufficient" boy to his home, and had found a 
family whose every deed was governed by fear, fear 
of the anger of the gods against the son who was 
alive, and fear of the revengeful spirit of the son 
whom they had tried to destroy forever. The father 
himself was a Taoist priest of some renown in the 
neighborhood, but though he had grown rich on the 
money that was paid to him for prayers against the 
evil fortune of his neighbors, he got little comfort out 
of these things in his own case, and was all the time 
trying tricks and schemes to outwit the gods. It was 
little wonder that the boy despised his clothes, for 
he Had been brought up to count his sisters as of 
very small use. They were all working in the homes 
of their future mothers-in-law at the time Yin-ti 
visited the family, but a neighbor's daughter, who 
was betrothed to Wei-tsu, was living with them and 
treated practically like a slave. She it was who had 
persuaded Wei-tsu to stop at Yin-ti's school and 
look, as she said, at "a girl who is so wise she can 
teach boys!" 

Finally, in her revery, Yin-ti went into a Buddhist 
temple, where, by the soft light of innumerable lamps, 
she saw a great image of Koan-Yan, "the thousand- 
handed Goddess of Mercy," before whom knelt many 



64 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

women, praying for sons. On her right sat a figure 
with the head of a monkey, the animal that by many 
of the women in China is believed to protect their 
homes from witches and elves, and which they wor- 
ship accordingly. On her left stood a carved tiger, 
the animal that is supposed to be able to guard chil- 
dren against sickness. As Yin-ti stood in the door- 
way of the temple she saw a little procession enter 
and make its way to the altar, where, before the 
Goddess, five girls, who had served for six years in a 
Buddhist nunnery, took their vows never to marry, 
never to eat fish, flesh, nor fowl, never to drink wine, 
and to follow always the teachings of the "Great 
God Buddha." Sad girls these, about Yin-ti's own 
age, who had turned to this life because life at home 
was impossible, and who were trying to find comfort 
at the feet of the Goddess of Mercy — the best they 
knew. 

Quickly Yin-ti's mind turned to another scene: 
The School Chapel at Wuchang; the simple beauty 
of the altar, fair linen and white flowers, with the 
lights and the cross above it. Quiet music, a kneeling 
congregation, and a little company of girls joyfully 
entering into the full privileges of the Church of 
Christ. Once more she seemed to feel the hands of 
the Bishop upon her head, and hear his voice as he 
prayed: "Defend, oh Lord, this Thy servant." A 
great wave of pity swept through her heart as she 
thought of the thousands and thousands of girls all 
about her to whom no one had as yet spoken of the 
things which had come to mean so much to her, and 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 65 

from the bottom of her heart she prayed that God 
would defend them in the midst of all the changes 
that were coming so fast to China, and would help 
her to show them, by the example of a Christian 
home, something of what it meant to be a servant of 
Christ. 

Here, with our hero and heroine ready to start out 
on the new life, "For God, for the Church, and for 
the Country/' to which they have pledged them- 
selves, the writer of this story will leave them and 
retire in favor of certain Chinese boys and girls who 
will speak for themselves in the next chapter. First, 
however, let one speak who is neither a boy nor a 
girl, but a man — Mr. Lieo, one of the clergy at St. 
Paul's Cathedral, Hankow. If you want to know 
what became of Ch'uen-hsi, and what were some of 
the difficulties he had bravely to meet as "a Priest 
of the Christian religion/' read Mr. Lieo's account of 
his own life and you can get a pretty good idea. 

F. H. LIEO'S STORY 

"I was born in the Hsien-lin district of Hupeh 
Province in 1864, the only son and the only male 
hope in a family of three brothers. For this reason 
not only my parents but my uncles treasured me and 
used various means to avert danger to my precious 
life. I wore about my neck a silver lock to keep my 
soul from slipping inadvertently away from my body. 
Until I was ten years old I had my head shaven and 
was dressed as a Buddhist Priest, so that the spirits 



66 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

should be deceived into thinking me one — and there- 
fore sacred; and I was constantly called by the 
family 'dog' and 'slave girl' that the same spirits — 
or others — might consider me not worth taking. I 
do not remember much about my childhood except 
that my older sister and I were very fond of each 
other, and that she took care of me. She did beauti- 
ful needlework, and people often asked her to em- 
broider things for them, her skill was so great. I 
still have some of her work. She could not read a 
single word, and simply helped about the house, 
sewed, or looked after me. 

"My father had plenty of land and I did not have 
to work, but I did not go to school till I was ten, 
when I grew a queue like the others and began my 
studies. By the end of two years I could repeat the 
Tour Books' and also the l Juvenile Learning/ but do 
not know that I understood or wished to understand 
them. The Chinese way of studying is always this 
for children, and I thought nothing about it until I 
was about twelve years old, when I remember asking 
the meaning of something. 

"When I was eleven we had a bad harvest, and 
my widowed mother (my father had died when I was 
five) was in straits, for her property was mostly in 
the ground and what came from it. My sister had 
been betrothed to a friend's child, and now my mother 
asked that she be taken to her new home, she and 
my mother and I all crying bitterly at the separation. 
She was not at all happy there, and at last I brought 
her back for a while, much to the joy of all of us. 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 67 

"When I was not yet thirteen it was decided that 
I must leave school and go to an uncle who lived 
in Hankow, there to learn some business and reach 
perhaps a higher place than now seemed open to me 
at home. I was delighted with the idea, for I had 
never once been away from the village. The journey 
was made in company with one of my uncles. He 
thought I would not be able to walk so far and was 
going to have a wheelbarrow for me; but my excite- 
ment and pride kept me up, and we reached the river, 
twenty miles away, by the end of the first day. 

"Here for the first time I saw a boat. Near my 
village there were only mountain streams not big 
enough even for a skiff; and so when I saw a Chinese 
house-boat floating on the surface of the river I cried 
out to my uncle to know what it was, saying it looked 
like a big duck. We got on board, and very full it 
was of people and baggage. When it began to move 
I was frightened, and during the whole two days not 
once did I look out from the cabin. Thus I reached 
Hankow without having received any impression from 
the forest of masts at the mouth of the Han and the 
houses crowding the bank. The streets seemed to me 
to be full of people, and I was very unhappy. I did 
not like either my aunts or my cousins. Whether it 
was that I was homesick, or that I was unconsciously 
influenced by my mother's low opinion of my aunt, I 
do not know ; but I would not play in the house, and 
was not allowed to go on the street for fear of getting 
lost in the hurrying crowds. 

"After a month my uncle said he would take me 



68 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

over to Wuchang to see my maternal aunt, wife of a 
catechist, Mr. Yang, who lived in the Boone School 
compound. I loved this aunt at once, though I had 
never heard anything about her before. She was a 
kindly woman, very fond of children, and there was 
something in the home atmosphere, the church ser- 
vices and the neighborhood of the school full of boys, 
which was both new and attractive. My uncle no- 
ticed how changed my manner was, and when he was 
about to return to Hankow he asked me whether I 
were willing to stay on here without him, and per- 
haps enter the school. I eagerly agreed, and, al- 
though the school was so full I could not enter until 
the next year, meanwhile I attended church and also 
heard my uncle's instructions in his family, and so 
learned to know and love the Doctrine. 

"Then came my first lesson in a foreign school, 
when, in 1878, I entered Boone School at the age of 
thirteen and a half. There were about thirty boys 
there. A little more than a year later, when I was 
fifteen, I was baptized. 

"During this year I had a letter from my mother 
telling me to come home. Rumors had reached my 
village that I had been sold to the foreigners, and 
though my mother had letters from me and did not 
entirely believe the report, still she wanted to see for 
herself, for she loved me dearly. I could not leave 
when she first wrote, since it was the middle of a 
term, but when the summer vacation came I appeared 
at home, much to the surprise of the neighbors, who 
had readily believed the story of my having been sold. 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 69 

"My sister was still at home, and we were all very- 
happy together until my father's birthday arrived. 
Then my mother told me to worship my father's tab- 
let and burn incense before it. I said that my father 
was not there, and why should I bow down to a 
wooden thing? He would not know if I did worship 
or not, for his body was in the grave and his spirit 
was not on earth. She insisted, saying: 'Foreigners 
may not worship in this way, but you are not a for- 
eigner, why cannot you do it?' Then I refused, and 
she was so angry that I ran away and hid at a 
neighbor's. Everyone sided, of course, with my 
mother, calling me 'Foreigner.' You must remember 
that I, a boy of fifteen, was then the only person in 
the village who believed in Christianity — the only 
Christian most of them had ever seen — and I had 
been baptized only a few months, so I felt very 
lonely. By afternoon I wanted to go home. I crept 
to the door and peeped in. My mother was making 
dough and looked angry still. Then I thought of 
something. It was an extremely hot day and she was 
perspiring freely. I took a fan, and, going in, stood 
behind her and fanned her. She did not speak, but 
I saw from her face that the trouble was over for 
this time. I thanked God very heartily for this de- 
liverance. 

"After a month's time, when I asked my mother's 
permission to go back to school, she reminded me that 
her ambition for me was to do something higher in 
life. I replied by quoting our proverb that there is 
nothing high but scholarship. She finally consented, 



70 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

and neither then nor afterwards objected to my be- 
lieving as I did. 

"It was when I was seventeen that my two uncles 
decided that I ought to become betrothed, and se- 
lected the daughter of a friend of theirs. My uncle 
asked me if I were willing, and I said I wished I 
could see her; he said he had seen her and that was 
all that was necessary, and so the matter was ar- 
ranged. Everyone was pleased with the match, for 
the girl's father was a well-to-do man with no sons 
and only two daughters. She was the younger of the 
two sisters, was then fourteen years old and was 
especially beloved. Her father was private secretary 
to an official. For four years a teacher came regu- 
larly to the house to give lessons to the two daugh- 
ters. In that time they learned to repeat the Tour 
Books' and part of the 'Juvenile Learning. , My wife 
says she did not like to study, but it was something 
to do. 

"When she was three years and a half old, the 
binding of her feet began. I have asked her if she 
were not happy as a child, in a family with plenty 
of money, servants to wait on her, and a father and 
mother who loved her. But she says: 'No; my feet 
were always being bound. They ached all the time, 
and I could not play, I was so lame.' The binding 
was gradual but steady. To begin with the side of the 
foot, including the two smallest toes, was drawn under 
by a bandage that was at first loose, and then tighter 
and tighter. Soon the other toes were included in 
the binding, and at last the whole end of the foot 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 71 

was drawn back and under, bound tight to the sole. 
This resulted in the breaking of some of the bones of 
the foot itself. Of course, this was not done in a 
year. In fact, it was not considered completed until 
she was ten years old, and her feet were a little over 
three inches long. Often she secretly loosed the ban- 
dages a little, but her mother always found it out 
and drew them tight again. And this, too, was be- 
cause she loved her. She remembered no games and 
no going out except sometimes on the back of a ser- 
vant to see the sights in the streets. But she learned 
to sew and to read. 

"When she was ten years old her mother died and 
she was sent to the house of a relative. Not long 
after her betrothal to me, when she was sixteen, there 
were some serious disturbances in Hankow and her 
father wished me to marry her at once, so that I 
might take her to Wuchang and protect her. As I 
was still in school I could not marry her then, but 
my aunt said she might come and live with her. I 
was very glad to have her in the family, that she 
might be instructed before we were married. My 
uncle and aunt taught her with their own children, 
and she liked it. I have never asked her what she 
thought about being married. I suppose she knew it 
must be, just as I did, and so took it as a matter of 
course. In China the boy and girl do not say whether 
they like it or not: their families decide for them. 

"About this time I was asked if I would like to 
study and by and by become a clergyman. I said 
that I would, but was afraid my mother would not 



72 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

consent to my going so far away as Shanghai, where 
the divinity school was. However, after much dis- 
cussion, she consented for me to go if I would send 
my betrothed out to live with her and take care of 
her while I was away. 

"When I had been in Shanghai only two years, 
news arrived of my mother's death. I at once went 
home to bury her, for, though only twenty years old, 
I was the head of the house and must therefore be 
present at the funeral. It had been expected that the 
Buddhist priests w r ould be invited, and that all the 
customary rites, including the burning of paper 
money for the support of the soul in the other world, 
would be performed by myself as chief mourner. Of 
course I had to tell them that these things could not 
be. Everyone was shocked to hear this, for to them 
it seemed most unfilial, and in China nothing is worse 
than an unfilial son. My family were especially in- 
dignant, for they would be disgraced by my be- 
havior. My sister burned the paper money and so 
did the others, but that did not make up for me. 

"When my uncle from Hankow arrived I went to 
meet him and made my reverence to him. Before I 
had said a word he struck me on the face so as to 
raise a great swelling on it, and then struck me again 
and again and kicked me. Because he was old and I 
was young, I could not return the blows. Then he 
threatened to send me to the Yamen for punishment 
as an unfilial son. I replied: 'You may have me 
beaten to death if you like, but I certainly will not 
do this foolish thing/ Then they all began to talk 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 73 

about the matter. Some said that since the church 
forbade my doing these things, and I was a servant 
of the church, I must follow its rules. Others told 
my uncle that if he should hurt me the church might 
protect me, and some of the family property be lost. 
I think he saw, too, that I would not be moved from 
my words, so he said: 'If you will not have the 
priests and will not burn the cashpaper, will you at 
least give a feast?' I consented to this, though I had 
to go in debt to do so, for this would take away the 
disgrace of a funeral where no money was spent. 

"When I left the village my betrothed remained 
there with my sister for another year. In 1888 I 
finished my studies in Shanghai and returned to Wu- 
chang. My wife was baptized three days before our 
wedding, and when Mr. Graves examined her for bap- 
tism, he was surprised to find how well she answered 
after only a year's teaching, and although she had 
been in a heathen family for three years since that 
time. This unusual ability was because she knew 
how to read and could study for herself. 

"I was made deacon by Bishop Boone in 1890, and 
that same year my first child was born — a little girl 
named Yuen-tsen. My wife wished to bind her feet 
just a little to make them look pretty, and they were 
that way for about a year. No tight bandages, but 
a strip of cloth wound around and around under the 
stocking, making the shape more pointed at the toe 
and more broad at the instep. Then she asked me 
what I thought about binding them tighter. I asked 
her if she thought God made a mistake when He 



74 GHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

created her feet to be large; that surely they were, 
like her hands, already perfect, and that to try to 
change them would be foolish and also an insult to 
God Who made them. She did not reply to this ; and 
then I asked her if she remembered her own child- 
hood. 'Did it hurt/ I said, 'when your feet were 
bound?' 'Yes/ she said, 'very much.' 'Then do you 
not love your own child that you should wish to make 
her suffer, too?' The feet were loosed at once, and 
neither hers nor those of her sisters were ever bound 
again. So they can run and play just like boys. 

"I worked on in Wuchang as deacon and priest 
until 1900, when I was moved to Hankow. Because 
since then I have had sons, my neighbors say that 
crossing the river changed my luck. The first little 
boy, because my wife had so longed for him, was bap- 
tized 'Samuel.' My old uncle, who lived with me 
until his death, never liked the girls. He still re- 
mained a heathen until a few years before his death, 
and would not hear the Doctrine or read our books — 
which he despised as not being classics — but would 
rail at me, treating me as though I were still a boy. 
I used to manage to teach my little girls their cate- 
chism when he was about, so that he could not help 
hearing something, though he pretended to be asleep. 
Later on he changed, and was baptized, but still he 
did not want the girls. When at last the little boy 
was born — the first male descendant in the family — 
he was more pleased than anyone. On the third day 
he came in to see the child, and drew from his coat 
something which he was about to put around the 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 75 

baby's neck. I saw that it was one of the silver 
locks such as I had worn about my neck when I was 
a boy to keep me safe. 'Ah, sir/ I said, laughing, 
'the old feeling is still there, isn't it? 7 Then I ex- 
plained that if he put it on for beauty it was all 
right, but if as a charm we could not allow it. So it 
was taken away and little Samuel wore a cross in- 
stead. 

"My heathen neighbors have wondered that I did 
not despise my daughters, for it is the custom in 
China to esteem girls lightly and to value boys. But 
I have never been sorry that I could not change them. 
They are good children, they like me and do not fear 
me unless they have been naughty. When they were 
all little I played school with them sometimes, giving 
them real lessons but not being very strict; and they 
would sit around in a circle as solemn as if they were 
real schoolboys. All who are old enough are in school 
now. My wife and I hope they are happier than 
we were as children, and I think they are." 



CHAPTER VI 

AN INVITATION 

The statement is sometimes made that mission- 
aries are not wanted in China. Here are some letters 
written by Chinese boys and girls, which show that 
they think that missionaries are both wanted and 
needed. While the writers are all students in Mission 
Schools, many of them have come from heathen 
homes and have not yet become Christians. These 
letters have been selected from a great number sent 
in, and may be accepted as sincere and disinterested 
testimony to the value of Christian missions in China 
and to the urgent need for more extensive work at 
this time. 

The first letter is from Helen Yen, who, since 
writing the letter, has graduated at St. Hilda's School, 
Wuchang, and will teach in Anking, in the missionary 
district of Wuhu: 

"St. Hilda's School, 
"Wuchang, Oct. 28, 1912. 
"My dear Friends: 

"This is my second English letter to America. The 
first letter which I wrote was to some other friend. 
That was about the revolution in our country and 

76 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 77 

myself. I am glad to have some foreign friends, and 
I am very glad to hear some very interesting things 
about your country. 

"Now I want also to tell you about myself. I was 
born in Hang-Chang. My family are Christians. I 
have two brothers and one sister. The eldest brother 
is studying in Boone College. The younger brother 
is in St. Paul's High School, Anking. My sister is 
married. She did not study long in school because 
the family that she married were not Christians. So 
they did not let her study and obliged her to marry 
early. I think you will be surprised that a Christian 
girl married into a family who do not believe God. 
I will tell you the reason why. It is, because at first 
my family were not Christians. My parents were 
keeping the old custom. When a girl or boy was just 
born their parents wanted to find some good family 
with which to arrange a marriage. That is why my 
sister married the family who were not Christians. 
Though her husband's family were not Christians, 
yet she was baptized and could go to church on Sun- 
day. They did not like to have her go, but she 
wanted to very much, and then they let her go to 
church once a month. Her home is in the country; 
it is very far from the church. 

"I thank God that he gave me very good fortune — 
to have large feet, to believe our true God, and to 
come to school to study. So I determined when I 
graduate I will help as many people as I can. 

"I have studied in St. Hilda's School about eight 
years. When I came to this school there was only 



78 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

one foreign teacher and there were about thirty girls. 
Now we have three foreign teachers and more than 
seventy girls. They all are Christians except a few* 
Our school is growing larger than before. Now we 
learn music and study English. At first we have not 
any English. So I think to myself, if your people 
had not come to our country and earnestly helped 
our people, we never could have become stronger; 
and I think to myself I should be the same as my 
sister and other girls in our country. 

"The foreign teachers in our school are Deaconess 
Phelps, who is the principal; Miss Scott and Miss 
Hutchins. Thank God we have these good teachers. 
Your people believed God early and the Spirit is in 
your hearts to make you wiser. That is why your 
training is better than in our country. But my heart 
hopes that all the schools will become larger and 
larger, and that all the Chinese girls will believe our 
true God. 

"I am very sorry, for there are many, many of 
them who do not know our God. That is why our 
country is not as strong as your country. I think 
you all know that our country is as yours now, both 
are under a President. But it is not as strong as 
yours. The reason is because our people are not very 
well educated and the education is not enough. I 
know a country depends upon the people, just as the 
forest depends upon the trees and the camp depends 
upon the soldiers. 

"Dear friends, if you pity our country and want it 
to be strong, please study harder during the youthful 




1—1 fl-l -u 



K 2 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 79 

times. If you love our country and our people as 
your brothers and sisters, please, when you finish 
your school, come to our country to help in preaching 
God's news. If you do come and earnestly help our 
people, then, of course, our country will be stronger. 
Dear friends, I deeply hope that you will come just 
in a few years, because we need you very much. 

"I think if our country becomes strong, our people 
are all well educated and believe God, then you 
and our people will, with one heart and one mouth, 
glorify our God. 

"With love to you all, 

"Your new friend, 

"Helen Yen." 

The next letter was written by one of the young 
teachers at St. Hilda's: 

"St. Hilda's School, 

"Wuchang, Oct. 30, 1912. 
"Dear Friends: 

"There is a great sea lies between us and hinders 
us from seeing and talking, so I write a few lines to 
you. Our country is a Republic now, as you know 
from the newspapers, but it is not really quite like 
your country. If you ask me why, I must answer you 
that the most important reason is we girls are unable 
to do our duty, though I am very sorry and ashamed 
to say it. There is not more than one in eight who 
can get the education in school. A large number of 



80 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

the country girls do not know what is the difference 
between a Republic and an Empire, or what makes 
the difference between day and night, and can never 
read the single words as one, two, three. Some of 
them still bind their feet and live according to the 
old custom. You would be surprised how poor they 
are, and would ask why they did not go to school. 
I am sure they like to go to school very much, but 
they cannot because there are only a few girls' schools 
in the large cities, and also in these few schools they 
cannot have a profitable education without foreign 
teachers' help. The education for girls in our coun- 
try is just like a little child who cannot help herself. 
Oh! how we need more foreign teachers. Do you 
see? 

"The more you are thoroughly educated the more 
you feel that you have a duty in this world for the 
people who are lacking education and dying in ig- 
norance. Do you not want to free them and save 
them from their present state? 

"I am sure you will do much good in this world 
and be kind enough to come to China to help us. I 
do hope we shall have many teachers from among you 
before long. 

"Wishing God's blessing on you in all that you do, 

"Sincerely yours, 

"Phoebe I. C. Ho." 

The three following letters are from students at 
St. Mary's Hall, Shanghai: 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 81 

"St. Mary's Hall, 
"Shanghai, Nov. 14, 1912. 

"My dear American Sisters: 

"It is a long time since I did not receive your letter. 
You are very kind and always remember me. I am 
very happy at school, for you know that school life 
is the best time in my life. You say that you like to 
know something about why more missionaries ought 
to be sent to China. I am glad to tell several reasons 
which I can think of. 

"China is an old country. Not only so, but also a 
powerful country. It is divided into eighteen prov- 
inces. Each province is far apart, so it is very hard 
for a clergy to carry doctrine from one province to 
another. 

"Most parts of China are civilized and have al- 
ready heard something about Christianity. They 
prepare very well to welcome more missionaries. Now 
our country is at the times of unpeacefulness, and 
it is fitting for more missionaries to come, so that 
good qualities may be planted in the Chinese minds. 
Then the end will come out naturally. 

"Now China is at the time of reforming. Reform- 
ing means changing. Things changing should change 
into a better form, and why not religion? We all 
know that religion is an important thing. Not only 
Christians are enthusiastic over religion, but also the 
heathen. They build temples and worship the gods 
with incense, and they think that the gods made of 
mud and wood can save them from their dangers. 



82 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

They are willing to sacrifice themselves before these 
idols, but all in vain. The heathen, who believe 
many kinds of superstitions, are many more than the 
Christians. When we do a thing we like to see its 
success, and the clergy who spread the doctrine are 
the same. So I think if more missionaries are sent 
to China the end will come more quickly. The coun- 
try will then be stronger, for strong religion is the 
root of a strong country. 

"I hope these several reasons will satisfy you. If 
not, then I will think more and tell you next time. 

"With my best regards to you all, 

"Yours sincerely, 

"Lan-tsung Tsu." 

The writer of the next letter is described by one of 
her teachers as being "an adorable little heathen girl, 
more interested in writing this letter than any other 
girl in the school." She certainly seems to be "not 
far from the kingdom." 

"St. Mary's Hall, 
"Shanghai, Nov. 5, 1912. 

"My dear American Sisters: 

"As we have investigated the prosperity or weak- 
ness of a country, we find that it chiefly depends 
upon whether the religious idea of that country is 
strong or not. Therefore, no matter how good the 
civilization or how intelligent the people that a coun- 
try possesses, that country cannot be strong unless 
it has a real religion. In regard to our own country, 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 83 

China, no real religion prevails, and the people stayed 
in darkness for thousands of years. 

"Fortunately, in recent years, the missionaries have 
been sent from your country to teach the real re- 
ligion. The Chinese people are very hard to believe 
in Christ, but now some of them are changed. Even 
the uneducated persons, when they have seen these 
missionaries' perfect conduct, they will admire and 
try to better their own manners. 

"I am sorry to say that, although you have sent a 
certain number of missionaries to our country, yet 
most interior lands have not heard of Christianity 
before. There are more idolators in China than all 
the other countries; so, for that reason, I think more 
missionaries ought to be sent. When our fellow- 
countrymen know a great deal about Christianity, the 
eyes of their heart will be opened and they will 
know that Buddhism is useless. When they under- 
stand the Bible they will know that we are all God's 
sons and daughters. For that reason all countrymen 
should love each other and never quarrel again. They 
will not only know that our own countrymen are their 
brothers and sisters, but that all the people in the 
whole world are brothers and sisters. 

"For this reason, we should say that all Christian 
countries ought to send missionaries to heathen coun- 
tries. When all the pagans turn to be Christians, we 
can live peacefully together. I think that is accord- 
ing to what God wants us to do. 

"Sincerely yours, 

"Vong-zan Wang." 



84 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

The following articles were written by students in 
the preparatory department of Boone University. Of 
the writer of the first article, his teacher says: 
"Being a non-Christian, he wrote from another point 
of view. He is also one of the bright students in the 
class. He has been known to his classmates as some- 
what opposed to Christianity, so I think his letter is 
a great testimony :" 

"Boone University, 
"Wuchang, Jan. 13, 1913. 

"Before my coming to Boone, established by the 
American Church Mission, I felt that what induced 
European countries to be powerful and rich were 
their recent knowledge and military forces. Now, 
having been educated here for six years, I am con- 
vinced that my former view was entirely inaccurate. 
I now believe that their prosperity and importance 
are due to Christianity, which is the spirit and source 
of their civilization. In case China adopts Western 
civilization, to accept Christianity has to be the first 
step. How fortunate it is for China that Christianity 
is now gradually and successfully in expansion in 
China. 

"During my stay in Boone I have been much im- 
pressed by the influence of Christianity. Now I can- 
not but try to express my striking impressions by 
the following lines. 

"First, since the appearance of Christianity in 
China, numerous persons with western civilization 
have been added to the small majority of Chinese 
scholars; for wherever the church is there will be 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 85 

found mission schools. Moreover, because of female 
education carried on partly by the American Church 
Mission the distinction between Chinese men and 
women is gradually disappearing. Boone is one of the 
most famous mission schools in China, and has pro- 
duced many graduates, and through its agency the 
American Church Mission is a great factor in edu- 
cational matters. 

"Secondly, Christianity, through the medium of the 
American Church Mission, has a great influence upon 
the Chinese personally and in society. It guides us 
in our struggle for life on this earth, and gives us 
mutual help and profit in both our mind and char- 
acter. In a word, it supplies us with every virtue 
necessary for human beings. 

"In conclusion, I cannot but glorify God for His 
justice, that he is making the Christian atmosphere 
to be wafted eastward in order to equalize the tem- 
perature of air in the universe." 

The next article, "China's First Need Being a 
Good National Religion," was written by one of the 
Christian boys: 

"In building a house, the first thing a man must do 
is to fix a firm foundation with cement, a mixture of 
a few elements which have the property of holding 
together as firmly as hard stones. On such a firm 
foundation, a house being built will last hundreds of 
years without danger of its falling down. What is 
true in building a new house is also true in establish- 



86 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

ing a new nation. What will the foundation of a new 
nation be? Will cement hold good? No, but there 
is some other thing which has the same effect on the 
nation as the cement has on the building. Religion 
is the thing that a nation ought to claim for her 
foundation; otherwise there will be nothing to unite 
the people. 

"Since the republic of China was established, many- 
questions have been asked as to what would be the 
most important thing in the organization of the gov- 
ernment. In other words, what is her first need? 
Some say it is the founding of schools; some say the 
developing of industries, and others the building of 
railways. Few among them ever declare that religion 
is the first of China's needs. If occasionally some 
persons in talking with them point out that a good 
religion is the first and most important thing that 
China should adopt, they would laugh and say that 
not religion but industries and commerce will make 
China great. From this, I, without hesitation, can 
judge their ideas to be wrong. By this time, although 
China needs industries, commerce and so forth, yet 
they are not so important as religion. In order to 
make these things prosperous, men of honesty and 
morality are needed to manage them, else they will 
never be prosperous, and consequently the condition 
of China will be as poor as she was under the Man- 
chu government. What makes a man honest and 
moral? Is it not religion alone which can prevent a 
man from acting badly? Some say that the popula- 
tion of China is very numerous, but men who da 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 87 

things with unselfishness are exceedingly few. Thus 
we are sensible that there must be religion to guide 
them in their work. What the Republic of China 
needs more than anything else to-day is men who 
live and die for others; the men who are willing to 
give themselves are the real citizens of our country. 
But these are hard to be found. They are only those 
who follow in the steps of Jesus Christ, Who came 
not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give 
His life a ransom for many." 

Equally strong are the sentiments of the next 
writer, whose subject is "China's Greatest Need — the 
Faith of Her People in Christianity": 

"Most people will laugh at me when they see this 
article, as they consider such a subject a stale tale 
talked over and emphasized by thousands of persons. 
But if we examine closely the complexion of society 
at present in our country, we will be furnished with 
a clear and striking illustration that Christianity is 
the greatest need. At the present time, all that many 
people desire is to live a luxurious life: the theater is 
their enjoyment; wine, their quenching beverage; 
gambling, their stimulant. A fatal result will happen 
if China's children seek only their own pleasure and 
happiness. The ignorant exceed the wise, and many 
people think that to be citizens of a republic means 
to respect no laws, obey no superiors and reverence 
no person. So I would say that Christianity and 
good government go hand in hand. Is an intrepid, 



88 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

long-legged and balky horse willing to serve his mas- 
ter and wander along the right course without reins? 
Religion is the reins to guide the people. If all would 
follow Christ's commands, the officials would serve 
the people; the people would obey the laws; the rich 
would contribute to relieve the poor; the wise would 
try their best to enlighten the ignorant. Throughout 
our country love and tranquillity would prevail, and 
we would be capable of taking our right place in the 
world." 

These letters and papers show why these young 
people think that the church at home should send 
them more missionaries and send them soon. They 
are asking great things, but no more than we are 
abundantly able to supply. Mencius, one of the great 
scholars of China, once said: "If there is no reason 
to make a gift, then it is too much to present a single 
bowl of rice; but if there is a reason, then it is not 
too much to give away a whole country, even as Yao 
presented the kingdom to Hsuin." So we need to 
ask ourselves, "Is there any reason why we should 
give what is asked for by our older brother across 
the sea?" If so, we must not hesitate even though it 
means, not perhaps the giving away of a kingdom, 
but the giving of that which will firmly establish a 
kingdom — even the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, 
Jesus Christ, 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 89 

A PRAYER FOR CHINA 

ANNO DOMINI 1913 

Lord our Governor, Father of all men, Whose 
will is manifested in the history of the nations, show 
forth Thy power, we beseech Thee, in this nation, 
now in this time of change and reconstruction. In- 
spire in the hearts of the people a right ideal, and 
move them to seek after it according to Thy laws. 
Save from pride and prejudice, from ignorance and 
self-seeking, all those who lead and rule, giving them 
the spirit of wisdom and counsel, to discern the times 
and to act for the welfare of all the people; so that 
a stable government may be established, and that 
peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and 
piety, may be set forward in China for all genera- 
tions. All this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 



APPENDIX 

THE CHUNG HUA SHENG KUNG HUI 

Sometimes, just because there are so many people 
in China, and there is so much to be done, people 
think that the little they can do will not be worth 
while. In that they are mistaken; for if everyone 
will help a little, the work that the church has under- 
taken in China can be carried on. For the purposes 
of the work of the whole Anglican communion, China 
has been divided into eleven dioceses, or, rather, mis- 
sionary jurisdictions. Of these, seven are under the 
care of the Church of England, and all have English 
bishops; one is under the care of the Canadian 
Church and has a Canadian bishop, and the other 
three are under the care of the Church in America 
and have American bishops. It is quite true that 
these three dioceses alone have a population larger 
than that of the whole of the United States, and that 
the three bishops in charge are carrying a heavy bur- 
den; but they would be the last ones to tell you that 
the Church had undertaken an impossible task. In- 
deed, the more work they have to do the better they 
seem to like it. As long as there are so many lazy 
people in the world it does seem that if any one wants 
to work he should be given an opportunity to do so. 

90 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 91 

But no one can do good work without proper instru- 
ments, and the instruments that these bishops need 
are men and women. They have recently asked the 
Church at home to send them out forty more workers 
within the next three years. If we take a glance at 
each of these three missionary districts we shall the 
better understand why these workers are needed. 

The territory within which our mission stations are 
to be found begins with the well-known seaport of 
Shanghai, and takes in the Yang-tze Valley, follow- 
ing along that famous river (whose name is some- 
times interpreted to mean "the son of the ocean") 
for a thousand miles. It includes five of the eighteen 
provinces in China ; and, while it is for the most part 
level country, it also includes some large mountain 
ranges in the west. It also contains some of the most 
wonderful gorges in the world. The bishop of Han- 
kow has, in his district, waterfalls which rival 
Niagara Falls. The work began in Shanghai in 1845, 
and has gradually spread out until now it extends to 
Sz-nan Fu, almost on the borderland between Hupeh 
and the great western province of Szech'uan. 

1. Missionary District of Shanghai. This was our 
original diocese, and was set apart as a missionary 
district of the American Church in 1845. For many 
years it consisted of five provinces and included all 
the work that we were doing in China. The Rt. Rev. 
Wm. Jones Boone was the first bishop, and he was 
succeeded, in turn, by Bishops Williams, Spheres- 
chewsky, Wm. J. Boone, Jr., and the present bishop, 
Rt. Rev. F. R. Graves, D.D. In 1902 the work was 



92 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

divided, and since then this district has consisted of 
one province, Kiangsu, about as large as the state of 
Pennsylvania, but with a population twice as large 
as the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania 
and Delaware combined. Bishop Graves has been in 
China since 1881. He has builded wisely and well on 
the foundations laid by the earlier bishops and their 
co-workers, and the work under his charge is second 
to none in China. St. John's University is known all 
over the country, and has done and is doing excellent 
work. St. Mary's Hall, a boarding school for girls, 
is also well and favorably known, and is doing for 
the girls what St. John's has long been doing for the 
boys. Other important institutions are St. Luke's 
hospital for men and St. Elizabeth's for women and 
children, and the orphanage for girls — all in Shanghai. 
The training school for Bible women is in Soochow, 
and the training school for catechists and St. An- 
drew's Hospital are in Wusih. There are, in addition 
to all these, forty-four mission stations under the 
Bishop's care. 

2. Missionary District of Hankow. This consists 
of the province of Hupeh and a part of the province 
of Hunan, the rest of Hunan being under the care of 
one of the English bishops. It is about as large as 
the state of California, and has a population equal 
to one-half of the whole of the United States. It is 
situated in the central part of China, in the midst of 
the Mandarin speaking people. The most important 
institution is Boone University, Wuchang. St. 
Hilda's boarding school for girls is increasing in num- 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 93 

bers and influence every year. There are two hos- 
pitals in Wuchang, St. Peter's for men and "Elizabeth 
Bunn Memorial" for women and children. The train- 
ing schools for Bible women and catechists are in 
Hankow. There are thirty-six mission stations. The 
present bishop, the Rt. Rev. Logan H. Roots, D.D., 
was consecrated in 1904 to succeed the Rt. Rev. James 
Addison Ingle, D.D., who was the first bishop of this 
district. 

3. The Missionary District of Anking. This district 
was cut off from the district of Hankow by the Gen- 
eral Convention of 1910. It lies between the districts 
of Shanghai and Hankow, and consists of the two 
provinces of Ankwei and Kiangsi. It is about as 
large as the states of Connecticut and Maine com- 
bined, and has a population fully three times as large 
as the whole of New England. The bishop is the 
Rt. Rev. D. T. Huntington, D.D., who was conse- 
crated on the feast of the Annunciation, 1912. The 
largest institution in this diocese is St. James' Hos- 
pital, Anking, which is one of the largest hospitals 
in Central China, and in connection with which are 
schools for the training of both men and women as 
nurses. There are no colleges in this district, but 
there are boarding schools for boys at Anking and 
Wuhu, and St. Agnes' school for girls in Anking. 
There are ten mission stations. 

In every one of these institutions in these three dis- 
tricts more workers are needed. First in importance, 
perhaps, come the schools. Our Chinese clergy for 
these three districts must come from the boys who are 



94 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

now in St. John's and Boone Universities. A fair 
share of the doctors who are to make over the health 
and hygiene of Central China must come from them, 
as well as the teachers who are to carry on the edu- 
cational work which we have begun. Already much 
has been accomplished. There are, in all, some thirty- 
five Chinese clergy who are doing noble work for 
Christ, but their number should be multiplied by ten 
if the multitudes of their fellow-countrymen are to 
be reached. That means more clergymen and teach- 
ers from America to assist in their training. The 
boarding schools for girls, St. Mary's, St. Hilda's, and 
later on St. Agnes, are the places to which we must 
look for our future supply of teachers, trained nurses 
and women workers for all branches of church work. 
St. James' Hospital, Anking, has been carried on 
for several years with only one foreign doctor where 
there should be three, and the same is true of most of 
our hospitals in China. And yet, this is the day of 
opportunity for medical work in China. Not only is 
the old prejudice against foreigners changing into an 
admiration for many of their methods, but the revo- 
lution opened a new door for medical missions. The 
work of the missionaries in the Red Cross Society 
made a profound impression upon the people. In 
Hankow, for instance, the Cathedral was turned into 
a temporary hospital; and not only the doctors and 
nurses, but all of the missionaries who were able to 
do so, joined willingly and gladly in the work of 
relief. They ministered, as did our blessed Lord, 
both to the bodies and the souls of men, and won the 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 95 

admiration of the people by their skill as well as by 
their devotion. The consequence is that more young 
men are eager to study medicine, and more girls are 
willing to enter the training school for nurses than 
ever before. If they do so, we must have more doc- 
tors and nurses to train them. 

In most of our mission stations we have day 
schools for boys, but only in the large centres have 
we schools for girls. In every mission station we 
ought to open a day school for girls. If we do, most 
of the children who enter the schools will come from 
heathen families; and in this way we may be able 
to reach hundreds of homes that are, as yet, un- 
touched. We ought also to open kindergartens in all 
of the large cities, and thus we would be reaching 
the children almost from their infancy. This is all 
the more important when we realize that the religious 
practices of heathenism are carried on very largely 
by children. They are taught, almost from their 
babyhood, to burn incense before the idols, and to 
burn the paper cash for their ancestors. In some 
parts of China children only a few years old may be 
seen wearing the penitent's robe, which shows that 
they are supposed to be bearing the sins of their 
parents. On one of the sacred mountains, where 
thousands of pilgrims go every year, there is a preci- 
pice named "Self-Sacrifice Peak," where every year 
many youthful pilgrims hurl themselves down to a 
certain death, as a sacrifice to the gods on behalf of 
their parents. The day of their youth is the day of 
our opportunity. 



96 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

But, aside from all these institutions, we need more 
workers (and notably more young women workers) 
in every one of these three districts. It is true of 
Shanghai, the oldest, no less than of Anking, the 
youngest; though perhaps it is more conspicuously 
true of the latter, because Bishop Huntington has 
women workers in only one station in his diocese — 
that is, at Anking. 

A typical instance is that of Ichang, in the district 
of Hankow. Work was begun there as far back as 
the days of the first Bishop Boone; but in all these 
years the Church has never sent a woman worker 
there; all that has been accomplished for women has 
been done by volunteer workers. Yet Ichang is a 
most important city. Not large, as we count num- 
bers in China (about 70,000 inhabitants), but it is 
the gateway to Western China, and from there we 
should have a chain of outstations extending to the 
Church of England diocese of Szech'uan. We have 
two departments of work in Ichang quite different 
from any other work that we have undertaken in 
China. One is the "blue thread" and lace industrial 
work for women, and the other a Trade School for 
boys. When Bishop Huntington was stationed in 
Ichang (he was there for some ten years before he 
became bishop of Wuhu), his aunt, Miss Huntington, 
started this industrial work for women. It was 
largely from the proceeds of this work that the 
Trade School was supported when first started as a 
refuge for beggar boys. So it has not only been a 
source of income to the mission from the first, but 



CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 97 

has also been the means of livelihood for about a 
hundred women. 

The Trade School was opened by Bishop Hunting- 
ton in response to an urgent necessity. The cargo 
junks come down the gorges from Szech'uan to Ichang 
with very little effort, and in consequence the neces- 
sary work can be done by small boys. They have 
not sufficient strength to take the boats back, and so 
having been enticed away from home under false pre- 
tences ("cheated down," as they say), they are left 
alone and friendless in a strange place. For this 
reason, Ichang has more than its share of young beg- 
gars; and this school is the means by which many 
of them may be taught a trade and given an oppor- 
tunity to grow up into useful men. There are now 
more than a hundred boys there being taught all 
sorts of trades, and the fame of the school has spread 
far and wide. It has served as an object lesson to 
show people what Christianity really means, and has 
opened the way for a fuller presentation of the Gos- 
pel. 

All our schools and all our hospitals are useless 
unless they help towards the building up of Christian 
homes. Now you cannot have Christian homes with- 
out Christian women ; and you cannot have Christian 
women unless you begin with the girls ; and you can- 
not begin with the girls unless you have some one to 
do the beginning. Ichang is one of the many places 
where the Church should send two young women at 
once. They would find waiting for them the little 
girls in the primary schools, ready by the help of 



98 CHIN-HSING IN CHINA 

their teaching and example to grow up into Christian 
women. They would find waiting for them the 
women of the industrial work, to whom the Church 
owes it that they should be taught something more 
than the work of their hands. They would find wait- 
ing for them the families of young men who have 
been educated in our mission schools, and yet who 
have not been able to persevere in their Christian 
life because of the heathen influence of their wives 
and mothers. They would find waiting for them a 
still larger number of girls and women who have 
never, in any way, been reached by the message of 
the Cross. And when they had delivered this won- 
derful message to all the women and children in 
Ichang, they could push on beyond the mountains 
to the very borders of Szech'uan, 



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